Armida (Haydn)

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Operas by Joseph Haydn
Der krumme Teufel (1751) La canterina (1766) Lo speziale (1768) L'infedeltà delusa (1773) Il mondo della luna (1777) La vera costanza (1779) L'isola disabitata (1779) La fedeltà premiata (1781) Orlando paladino (1782) Armida (1784) L'anima del filosofo (1791)
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Armida is an opera in three acts by Joseph Haydn, set to a libretto based upon Torquato Tasso's poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). The first performance was in 1784. The opera received 54 performances from 1784 to 1788 at the Esterháza Court Theatre, and during the composer's lifetime also was performed in Bratislava, Budapest, Turin and Vienna. Haydn himself regarded Armida as his finest opera.^[1] Armida then disappeared from the general operatic repertoire, and in the 20th century was revived in 1968 in a concert rendition in Cologne, and later a production in Bern.^[2]

Karl Geiringer has commented on how Haydn adopted the "principles and methods" of Christoph Willibald Gluck in this opera, and how the opera's overture alone encapsulates the opera's plot in purely instrumental terms.^[3]

[edit] Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 1784 (Conductor: - )
Armida, a sorceress	mezzo-soprano
Rinaldo, a knight	tenor
Zelmira, accomplice of Armida	soprano
Idreno, king of the Saracens	baritone
Ubaldo, friend of Rinaldo	tenor
Clotarco, a knight	tenor

[edit] Selected recordings

• Philips 6769 021: Jessye Norman, Claes J. Ahnsjö, Norma Burrowes, Samuel Ramey, Robin Leggate, Anthony Rolfe Johnson; Lausanne Chamber Orchestra; Antal Doráti, conductor
• Teldec 81108-2: Cecilia Bartoli, Christoph Prégardien, Patricia Petibon, Oliver Widmer, Scot Weir, Markus Schäfer; Concentus Musicus Wien; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor^[2]

[edit] References