L’opera seria (Gassmann)

The composer Sospiro and the author Delirio are getting ready to proudly present their new opera. But now the problems start: the impresario Fallito wants to make cuts, the prima donna Stonatrilla wants more attention, another of the singers wants a new aria and the two castrato singers fail to appear at all. And to top it all, the singers’ mothers are interfering with everything. Despite all this, the opera Oranzebe is eventually performed – and ends in comical chaos. With L’opera seria, the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann and his librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi created one of the most madcap opera parodies of the 18th century. The work, first performed in 1769 at the Burgtheater, celebrates the wit and artful characterisation of opera buffa by ridiculing the worst sins of serious opera with arrogant singers, pointless virtuosity, overblown sets and costumes, and insincere pathos. Not for nothing was librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi the driving force behind Christoph Willibald Gluck’s operatic reform, while Florian Leopold Gassmann, in his capacity as director of music at the court of Joseph II, acted as the link between Gluck and the generation of the First Viennese School. Director Laurent Pelly, who masterfully combines biting satire and comedy in his productions, brings L’opera seria back to the city it was first performed in. Christophe Rousset, a regular guest at the MusikTheater an der Wien as a specialist in 18th-century music, conducts his ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques.

In Italian with German and English surtitles
Introduction to the work 30 minutes before curtain-up

Co-production with the Teatro alla Scala, Milan