Serse
Dramma per musica in three acts by Georg Friedrich Händel
Libretto based on that by Niccolò Minato and Silvio Stampiglia
German translation by Eberhard Schmidt
In a set up by Stefan Herheim
Tickets
3 hours 15 minutes
Inaugurally performed in 1738, Serse marks the end of Handel's endeavours in London in the field of Italian opera. The composer's focus on oratorio a year later would eventually also bring him the financial success denied him during his almost thirty-year period working in the field of opera. Of course the plot of this opera has little to do with the titular Persian king. Rather, the piece revolves around the typical love difficulties of Baroque opera. Instead of the pearl necklace-like sequence of recitative and da capo aria, Handel largely dispenses with this aria form as a determining structural principle in Serse, instead using succinct elements which bolster the theatrical flow.
Together with the constant alteration between tragedy and comedy, Serse is an astonishingly modern-seeming masterpiece which begins with a touching declaration of love for a plane tree that is one of the most famous pieces in musical history.
A coproduction of the Komische Oper Berlin and the Deutschen Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg