DESCRIPTION:
M. R. Wesseling portraits Handel heroines: Medea

From G.F. Handel: Teseo (HWV 9)

Sibilando, ululando
atterrate la rival che mi scherni!

Nè a punirla vi stancate,
ch'il tormneto fà contento
questo cor ch'ella tradi.

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With hisses and screams
strike down the rival who cheated me!

Do everything in your power
to punish the one who torments me,
soothe this heart that she has battered.

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Medea, having killed her own children, flies to Athens where she hopes to find peace. Head over heals she falls in love with the war hero Teseo who is in love with Agilea. Medea becomes jealous. She tortures her rival Agilea and calls for help from the powers of the underworld.

"Although as Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare or Amadig I had wonderful music to sing, it was the female figures in the mezzo-soprano range that had a great deal more flesh and bones as characters; they were marked by many more layers and colors, they were more daring and bolder, darker, more malicious, more passionate, more insane, etc. Most often they turned out to be the actual masterminds and principle figures in the respective operas."
[Swiss mezzo-soprano M.R. Wesseling]

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handel
portraits of mezzo-soprano heroines
maria riccarda wesseling
lautten compagney berlin
wolfgang katschner
Deutschlandradio Kultur