Handel’s five act opera Teseo was premièred in 1713 at the Queen’s Theatre in London. After flopping with his previous work Il pastor fido Handel tied up to his big success Rinaldo and again created an opera with a heroic subject, sophisticated stagecraft and a big orchestra. The Italian librettist Niccolo Haym based the libretto on Philippe Quinault’s Thesée, which has originally been created for Jean Baptiste Lully’s homonymous opera. Teseo has inherited many qualities of the French tragédie lyrique style, such as the five-act structure, big arias in the middle of scenes (meaning that characters do not have to leave the stage after their arias), a secondary romantic couple, many short arias and recitatives and many accompanied recitatives. In 1947 the opera was rediscovered and staged for the first time after Handel’s death at the Göttinger Händelfestpiele, followed by a production at the Goethe-Theater Bad Lauchstädt and few others. Finally, in 2004 Handel’s jewel of operatic work was performed at the beautiful setting of the Schlosstheater Potsdam under the direction of Axel Köhler. The cast leaded by Jacek Laszczkowski, who is singing the title role and has been chosen as Singer of the Year 2003 by the German magazine Opernwelt is outstanding. Also, the Lautten Compagny conducted by Wolfgang Katschner was highly acclaimed for his “astonishingly delicate and beautiful” (The Times) accompaniment.
