The concert will take place on 13 September 2022 (Tuesday) at 7:00 p.m. in the Bolesławiec Marian Basilica at 3 Kościelna Street in Bolesławiec. Admission is free. Duration: 70 minutes.
Performers: Jarosław Thiel – conductor, Tomáš Král – baritone, Wrocławska Orkiestra Barokowa.
Organizers:
The concert by Wrocławska Orkiestra Barokowa under the direction of Jarosław Thiel, featuring soloist Tomáš Král, will reveal the wealth of repertoire by Baroque composers working in Germany, England, Italy and Sweden. That evening, the basilica will be filled, among other things, with the sounds of operatic works by Georg Friedrich Händel, Reinhard Keiser and Attillio Ariosti.
And they add:
As a symbolic introduction, the musicians will open with the festive Overture to the opera Alfred by Thomas Arne of England. Among the artist’s other works, audiences will hear Con spirito and Largo, movements from Ouverture in G minor, which concludes a collection of eight works of this type. The overture will precede a series of compositions, including works by Georg Friedrich Händel – Král will perform an aria from the acclaimed opera Rodelinda, and we will also hear dance-style movements: Courante and Menuet from the opera Almira, as well as the impressive Concerto belonging to the score of Ottone, re di Germania. The artists will also present excerpts from the operatic output of Georg Philipp Telemann, whose relationship with Händel was based not only on professional ties, but also on a friendship founded on mutual respect and appreciation. For a large part of his life, he worked in Hamburg; however, when he arrived in the city, Reinhard Keiser was much more famous. The artists competed fiercely on musical grounds, but Telemann ultimately gained the title of Hamburg’s greatest opera composer. Among the more highly regarded titles in Keiser’s operatic output are Octavia and Fredegunda.
Tomáš Král will also perform arias from operas by Georg Caspar Schürmann, who was involved not only in composition but also in singing, as reflected in his vocal and instrumental works, and by the Italian composer Attillio Ariosti. His operas were successfully staged, among other places, in London, but were soon overshadowed there by the works of the aforementioned Händel. One of Ariosti’s outstanding pupils was Johan Helmich Roman, who came from Sweden. His works clearly show the influence of Händel’s compositional language, including in his cantatas. One of them is the secular cantata Festa musicale, included in the concert programme and composed in 1725 on the occasion of the birthday of the then King of Sweden, Frederick I. In addition to opera and cantata, the artists will also turn to the score of La pace di Kamberga – an oratorio by Johann David Heinichen, a composer associated with the court of Augustus II the Strong.
Details are available on the poster.
(Header photo: Łukasz Rajchert/NFM; instagram.com/wroclawbaroqueorchestra).