Orlando (opera)

Orlando (HWV 31) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel written for the King's Theatre in London in 1733. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's L'Orlando after Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which was also the source of Handel's operas Alcina and Ariodante. More an artistic than a popular success at its first performances, Orlando is today recognised as a masterpiece.

The opera was first given at the King's Theatre in London on 27 January 1733. There were 10 further performances and it was not revived. The first production since Handel's lifetime was given at Halle, Handel's birthplace, in 1922. A production staged by the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, England, in 1966, conducted by Anthony Lewis, with Janet Baker in the title role, brought the opera back to London for the first time in over two centuries with performances later the same year at Sadler's Wells Theatre. The United States premiere of the opera was presented by the Handel Society of New York (HSNY) in a concert version on 18 January 1971 at Carnegie Hall with Rosalind Elias in the title role. The HSNY had made the first recording of the opera in 1970 in Vienna with a mostly different cast for RCA Red Seal Records. Peter Sellars directed the first staged production of the work in the United States at the American Repertory Theater on 19 December 1981. Countertenor Jeffrey Gall sang the title role and Craig Smith conducted.

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