When the newly created Adam and Eve share their final duet at the end of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, they sing with such unfeigned optimism that it becomes possible for the audience to forget, if only for a moment, what happens next; their future in a paradise free from sin, shame and ownership of property seems assured. When the same two characters appear at the beginning of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il Primo Omicidio, which was given a high-profile new staging as the centrepiece of the Staatsoper Berlin’s annual Barocktage, they know only mourning. Yet banishment from paradise turns out to be only the beginning of their torment; by the end they will also have lost both their sons, one doomed to eternal exile, the other victim of the first murder.
Scarlatti’s trattenimento sacro is a work of two distinct halves, and the new production at the…
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