Haydn: Orlando Paladino

Recorded live at the Staatsoper unter den Linten, Berlin, 8th May 2009

René Jacobs, conductor Freiburger Barockorchester Nigel Lowery / Amir Hosseinpour, staging Nigel Lowery, set & costume design

For more than 25 years René Jacobs has dedicated his life to baroque operas and works with the best ensembles for early music. On the occasion of the Haydn Year the renowned Freiburger Barockorchester and outstanding baroque opera singers such as Marlis Petersen, Alexandrina Pendatchanska, Pietro Spagnoli and Tom Randle presented Haydn’s most successful opera from the Berliner Staatsoper.

“Orlando Paladino”, written in 1782, was Haydn’s most famous opera during his lifetime, with thirty performances in Esterháza in the first two years after its composition. The libretto, a “drama eroicomico”, gives scope to Haydn’s frequently puckish sense of humour, as well as his inventive melodic expression. Most semi-serious operas of the period typically inserted comic characters into an essentially serious story but Haydn expanded the comic elements even into the more serious scenes.

Another very colourful and vivid staging by the successful team Nigel Lowery and Amir Hosseinpour.