Centuries after the era of its birth, baroque music remains pretty popular through the works of composers like Bach, Handel and Vivaldi.
But baroque operas? Less so. Even big opera companies don’t stage many of these musically ornate pieces written from roughly 1600 to 1750.
So, it’s not too surprising that Riccardo Broschi’s “Idaspe” isn’t well known. What is surprising is that even some people who pay close attention to such things haven’t heard of this 1730 opera at all, even though it starred the famed castrato Farinelli.
Jim Cassaro is head of the University of Pittsburgh’s Finney Music Library, and a music professor who’s studied 18th- and 19th-century opera. But he’d had no concept of “Idaspe,” or of Broschi either, until this year, when Quantum Theatre announced it was staging the show.
One reason for that obscurity: “Idaspe” was last performed – anywhere – in the year of its creation, nearly three centuries ago. And the story of why it’s making its North American premiere Friday, at the Byham Theater, in a production starring Vivica Genaux and John Holiday, is suitably involved, with detours to Italy, England and Austria.
Finding “Idaspe”
For Quantum founder and artistic director Karla Boos, the initial inspiration was a pair of arias sung by Genaux, the world-famous mezzo-soprano. Boos, a lover of baroque music, wanted to stage the opera they came from, Vivaldi’s “Bajezet.” She enlisted Claire Van Kampen, the acclaimed British composer and director, and got Genaux herself to star -- but the project was derailed when another U.S. company announced plans to produce “Bajezet.”
That production was itself postponed by the pandemic, but Quantum was set on a new path when Van Kampen -- the senior research fellow for early modern music at Shakespeare’s Globe theater -- learned that the arias that had ensorcelled Boos weren’t actually written by Vivaldi. Rather, as was common at the time, he’d “borrowed” them, from something called “Idaspe.” Van Kampen had never heard of it, but was thrilled to learn that opera was composed by Broschi, an Italian composer who wrote it for his brother, Farinelli – a legendary singer who was the central figure of Van Kampen’s play “Farinelli and the King.”
But challenges remained. Only a single, handwritten copy of the opera’s score existed, and it resided in the Austrian National Library, in Vienna. Though it was accessible via an online archive, it was written in baroque-era musical notation, which differs slightly but meaningfully from modern notation.
Boos turned to music ensemble Chatham Baroque, with whom she’d collaborated on a unique, baroque-infused 2015 production of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.”
"Idaspe" was "like our pandemic project,” said the group’s Scott Pauley. He and his two fellow co-artistic directors, Andrew Fouts and Patricia Halverson, spent four months with the 350-page score, painstakingly entering each note into a software program that would translate it for modern musicians.
Another challenge: The original score ran to nearly four hours. Van Kampen and Chatham Baroque cut it down to about two. Finally, in the way of many baroque operas, “Idaspe”’s narrative about two sibling refugees from the Middle East who get entangled in organized crime in Naples was xenophobic, Boos said. So Van Kampen reworked the book, as well as transplanting the action to Naples in the mid-1960s, allowing for suitably stylish period costumes.
“It’s really a story about love, which we can all relate to, and in ‘Idaspe,’ everyone loves someone who either can’t love them back, or won’t,” said Van Kampen. “There’s this desperate yearning to it, which plays really well to our modern sense of theatricality on stage, which is surprising, [and] surprised all of us.”
Boos said the story, though 300 years old, remains thematically relevant as well.
“It’s these two immigrant children from the Middle East who land in Naples as refugees. But the society that quote-unquote welcomes them doesn’t do anything for them, doesn’t provide,” she said. “I think it is the story of many immigrant people.”
Meet the Cast
Genaux, a baroque specialist who often sings the demanding and highly ornate parts Farinelli once tackled, does so again here. She takes the role of the heroic Dario, one of the two siblings who after emigrating are separated and become bosses of rival crime families.
Genaux praised the “Idaspe” score. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful example, one of the most beautiful examples, of this style of music that I’ve done in almost a 30-year career,” she said.
Grammy-winning tenor Karim Sulayman plays Dario’s more brutal brother, Artaserse, whose kidnapping of two women from the rival clan ignites the opera’s central conflict. Internationally renowned countertenor John Holiday, known for his 2020 appearance on TV’s “The Voice,” sings the title role of Idaspe, a friend and ally of Dario’s.
Given that no one has heard “Idaspe” for generations on end, Holiday agreed that this cast is effectively originating these roles. “I feel really honored to be part of that,” he said.
The other singers are Pascale Beaudin, Shannon Delijani, Zoie Reams, and Wei En Chan.
True to its baroque roots, when opera was often blended with ballet, the stage action in Quantum’s “Idaspe” includes eight local dancers, guided by choreographer Antonia Franceschi.
The score, meanwhile, will be performed on period and period-appropriate instruments by Chatham Baroque and 16 guest musicians. Instrumentation includes timpani, harpsichord, cello, violin, viola, viola de gamba, bass, French horn, baroque oboe, and the six-foot-long lute known as the theorbo.
Boos noted that the show’s scale is unusually large for Quantum: seven singers, eight dancers, 19 musicians. For a company she founded to create a new theater for each show, in parks and old warehouses and such, it’s a big enough undertaking to warrant occupancy of a traditional theater: the venerable, 1,300-seat Byham. And instead of the troupe’s standard multi-week run, “Idaspe” will get a more opera-like schedule, with five performances over nine days.
As for Jim Cassaro, the Pitt music professor and fan of the baroque, he said he’ll be there. “I’m really, really happy that they resurrected this piece,” he said.
Quantum Theatre performs “Idaspe” Fri., Oct. 7, and Oct. 9, 11, 13 and 15. More information is here.
