Cavalli’s Pompeo Magno on the 2025 Bayreuth Baroque Opera Pageant

Cavalli: Pompeo Magno – Nicolò Balducci (Sesto), Mariana Flores (Issicratea) – Bayreuth Baroque Opera Pageant 2025 (Picture: © Clemens Manser Images)

Cavalli’s opera Pompeo Magno (Pompey the Nice) was premiered in Venice in 1666 on the teatro S. Salvatore. The work was devoted to Madama Illustriss. D. Maria Mancini Colonna, Prencipessa Romana, Duchessa di Tagliacozzo, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, who had married Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna in 1661.

While on the French court docket in her youth Maria Mancini had captured the center (and extra) of the younger Louis XIV. He was genuinely in love along with her, and wished to marry her. She was prepared to marry him, however the marriage was in direct opposition to the plans of each the king’s mom and Marie’s uncle and guardian, the Cardinal. So, in 1661 she was despatched away from court docket to marry her Italian prince.

Cavalli: Pompeo Magno – Bayreuth Baroque Opera Pageant 2025 (Picture: © Clemens Manser Images)

Cavaill’s opera was carried out once more, in Bologna in 1692 underneath the title of Il pompeo. The work was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 1975 underneath the musical route of Denis Stevens, and opera has skilled a restricted renaissance in recent times. The 2025 Bayreuth Baroque Opera Pageant offered the work underneath Leonardo García Alarcón’s musical route along with his Cappella Mediterranea in a manufacturing directed by Max Emanuel Cencic who additionally sang the title function with a forged together with Mariana Flores (Issicratea), Nicolò Balducci (Sesto), Sophie Junker (Giulia), Valer Sabadus (Scipione Servilio), and Dominique Visse (Delfo).

Cavalli: Pompeo Magno – Max Emanuel Cencic, Marcel Beekman, Alois Mühlbacher, Valer Sabadus, Nicholas Scott – Bayreuth Baroque Opera Pageant 2025 (Picture: © Clemens Manser Images)

Pompeo Magnuo is considered one of Cavalli’s last Venetian operas, coming towards the top of an awfully prolific profession throughout which he composed over 40 stage works on the charge of roughly one per yr. The opera takes its historic inspiration from the Roman common Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106-48 BCE), who fashioned the primary triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Crassus. He’s the Pompey who seems, solely in loss of life, in Handel’s Giulio Cesare.

Cavalli: Pompeo Magno – Sophie Junker (Giulia), Valer Sabadus (Servillio) – Bayreuth Baroque Opera Pageant 2025 (Picture: © Clemens Manser Images)

The plot ingeniously combines historic figures with fictional components, creating a posh narrative of political intrigue, romantic entanglements, and private vendettas. The opera follows the victorious return of Pompeo to Rome after his third navy marketing campaign, the place he receives a hero’s welcome from Caesar and different dignitaries. Behind this public show of unity, a “secret warfare” of affection, need, treachery and jealousy unfolds on the Roman court docket.

Cavalli: Pompeo Magno – Bayreuth Baroque Opera Pageant 2025 (Picture: © Clemens Manser Images)

The performances in Bayreuth had been filmed and together with different occasions on the pageant, the opera is out there within the media libraries of ARTE Live performance and BR Klassik. Mezzo TV will air the pageant in December 2025, with Medici.television to comply with beginning in 2026.

Cavalli: Pompeo Magno Alois Mühlbacher (Farnace), Valerio Contaldo (Mitridate), Mariana Flores  (Issicratea) Bayreuth Baroque Opera Pageant 2025 (Picture: © Clemens Manser Images)

Leonardo García-Alarcón:
    Conductor and Harpsichord
Max Emanuel Cencic:
    Director
Helmut Stürmer:
    Stage Design
Corina Gramosteanu:
    Costume Design
Léo Petrequin:
    Mild
Max Emanuel Cencic, Fabián Schofrin:
    Dramaturgy
Constantina Psoma:
    Director’s Assistant
Chiara d’Anna:
    Motion Coach

Max Emanuel Cencic: Pompeo Magno
Mariana Flores: Issicratea
Valerio Contaldo: Mitridate
Alois Mühlbacher: Amore / Farnace
Nicolò Balducci: Sesto
Sophie Junker: Giulia
Victor Sicard: Cesare
Nicholas Scott: Claudio
Valer Sabadus: Scipione Servilio
Jorge Navarro: Colorado Crasso
Dominique Visse: Delfo
Kacper Szelążek: Arpalia
Marcel Beekman: Atrea
Pierre Lenoir: Primo Prencipe / Genius
Angelo Kidoniefs: Secondo Prencipe
Ioannis Filias: Terzo Prencipe
Christos Christodoulou: Quarto Prencipe

Cappella Mediterranea