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This symposium was convened by Michele Calella of the Institut für Analyse, Theorie und Geschichte der Musik, at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. Calella, an acknowledged expert in eighteenth-century opera, obtained the collaboration of the Theater an der Wien and its Intendant, Roland Geyer, for an operatic-academic event highlighting the premiere of a new production of Handel's Partenope by Pierre Audi on 22 February 2009. The performance, with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques, featured Christine Schäfer in the title role, Patricia Bardon as Rosmira and David Daniels as Arsace. The Theater an der Wien, the original venue for Leonore and Fidelio, aims to renew the operatic canon by focusing on eighteenth-century opera, modern ballet and cross-genre productions. In 2008/2009 it has offered Handel's Ariodante, a staged performance of Messiah, a Fidelio ballet, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Mozart's Mitridate Re di Ponto and Don Giovanni, plus Rossini, Strauss, Debussy and Stravinsky. Concert performances have included works by Haydn (L'isola disabitata), Gluck (Ezio), Domenico Scarlatti (Tolomeo ed Alessandro) and Luci mie traditrici by Salvatore Sciarrino (born 1947), on a libretto by the seventeenth-century poet Giacinto Andrea Cicognini.
The well-attended symposium benefited from the experience of the excellent performance directed by Rousset: participants got a fresh impression of Handel's opera, members of the audience took the opportunity to raise questions about the work, and critical eyebrows were raised about the production ('Honestly, the opera I saw was not the one I used to know'). The symposium was not exclusively a Handel event. Partenope was originally a Neapolitan opera, premiered at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in 1699 with music by Luigi Mancia; the libretto by Silvio Stampiglia (1664-1725) belongs to a series of drammi per musica that he wrote on subjects relating to ancient Italic history. In this instance he embroiders the legend of the foundation of Naples by a Greek princess (or nymph) called Parthenope. The libretto was often set in Italy; its productions during the first half of the eighteenth century reached so many cities that Robert S. Freeman could metaphorically narrate 'The Travels of Partenope' in the collection Studies...