Anything but a dying art

People interested in opera, either know very well the reforms proposed by Gluck and Calzabigi, and their operas of course, or limit themselves to the melody of ‘Che farò senza Euridice’. I have to confess that this is my first live exposure to the azione teatrale that was presented on 5 October 1762 to commemorate the nameday of emperor Franz in the Burgtheater of Vienna.And I refer to the specific 1762 version because that is the version Los Angeles Opera presented, only cutting the final ballet. Conductor Hartmut Haenchen was intelligent and brave enough, to avoid the trap of the conflated versions, performing the original ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’ and omitting the ‘Allegro non tropo’, that of the ‘Dance of the Furies’ that ended Don Giovanni. Besides these decisions, Mr. Haenchen, had a very good performance trying to extract…