Trionfo!

It doesn’t necessarily have to be “Messiah” at Christmas! The Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz continues its series of baroque concerts with an extra special treat conducted by the new Principal Conductor – the very first oratorio from the pen of Georg Frideric Handel.

The composer’s ingenious early work is about the, “triumph of time and truth”. Four allegorical figures discuss the question as to whether youthful beauty will devote itself to pleasure or will reflect on deeper values. The concluding moral that it is not intoxication with more transient desire that makes humans what they are is no surprise, and in fact it the libretto comes from a Roman cardinal. In 1707, Benedetto Pamphilj provided the then 22-year-old Handel the material that would literally occupy his entire life. He extended his piece in 1737 to Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità and reworked this once again in 1757 as “The Triumph of Time and Truth”, his final oratorio.