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Programme presenting rare and fascinating operatic performances

Programme presenting rare and fascinating performances and vividly communicating the immediacy of the live experience

Opera on 3: Dvořák's Armida

Dvořák's Armida

BBC Radio 3 - Opera on 3, Dvořák's Armida

Love and sorcery combine in Dvořák's Armida, recorded at the Wexford Festival.

Love, sorcery and tragedy at the time of the crusades combine in Dvořák's Armida. Recorded at the Wexford Festival, this is a rare chance to hear Dvořák's final opera.

For those who seek out obscure and neglected operas, the siren call coming from the small town of Wexford on the south-east coast of Ireland has long been irresistible. Among the resurrected treats from this year's Wexford Festival is Dvořák's final operatic essay, Armida. A flop at its 1904 Prague premiere, and rarely revived since, Armida is based on Torquato Tasso’s mythic account of the Crusades, Gerusalemme liberata. By the time Dvořák chose part of the 16th-century Italian epic poem for his opera, the text (once all the rage for librettists and composers) had been out of fashion for more than a century. Perhaps that accounted for the Prague audience's lukewarm reaction which might have been more positive if Dvořák had, as usual, chosen a Slavonic setting.

Sean Rafferty introduces this tale in which a de rigueur love triangle and a dollop of good and evil magic ends in tragedy when the Crusader knight Rinald kills not only his love rival Ismen (a wicked sorcerer) but also, by mistake, Armida – the woman he loves.

Recorded earlier this month.

Antonín Dvořák: Armida

King Hydraoth of Damascus ..... Jozef Benci (bass)
Armida ..... Jennifer Davis (soprano)
Ismen ..... Stanislav Kuflyuk (baritone)
Petr ..... Jan Hnyk (bass)
Bohumir / Muezin ..... Rory Dunne (bass-baritone)
Rinald ..... Gerard Schneider (tenor)
Dudo ..... Chris Mosz (tenor)
Sven ..... Josef Moravec (tenor)
Roger ..... Thomas Birch (tenor)
Gernand ..... Andrii Kharlamov (baritone)
Ubald ..... Josef Kovačič (bass)
Siren / A nymph ..... Libuse Santorisova (soprano)

Chorus and Orchestra of Wexford Festival Opera
Norbert Baxa (conductor)

Read the synopsis and further details about the production on the Wexford Festival web page: https://bit.ly/3TIDnPq

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