Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Vivaldi’s opera, Bajazet, will be presented at the Town Hall Theater in Galway on Tuesday January 25 from 5pm. It is a co-production between the Irish National Opera (INO) and the Royal Opera House in London, in partnership with the Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO).

INO artistic director Fergus Sheil describes Bajazet as “an explosive opera with larger-than-life characters, inhabiting a world of power games, precariousness, violence, betrayal, identity theft, of disguise, challenge and revenge”.

A lot of drama then in the opera in three acts which was created in 1735 in Verona. According to Fergus, it “corresponds to a musical score that jumps out at you. Vivaldi’s vocal writing is as colorful as you’d expect from the composer of The Four Seasons. He challenges his singers to play with exceptional virtuosity and the vocal acrobatics drive the drama forward.”

This is the second Vivaldi opera to be staged by INO – the first was Griselda in 2019, which was also the first time a Vivaldi opera was staged in Ireland.

It is directed by INO’s artistic partner, Peter Whelan, also artistic director of the Irish Baroque Orchestra. He is working with the IBO on this production, as he did with Griselda.

Set in the 14th century, this drama filled with powerful men and strong women begins after the Ottoman sultan, Bajazet, was defeated by the Tartar prince, Tamerlano. Bajazet and his daughter, Asteria, are now prisoners.

Asteria is in love with a Greek prince, Andronicus, and Bajazet asks her to take care of her, although Andronicus is Tamerlano’s ally.

However, Tamerlano also has designs on Asteria. He is engaged to another princess, Irene, but intends to break off this engagement to pursue the deposed sultan’s daughter.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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