Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusion) – Opéra de Lausanne

The oratorio of a young Lutheran on a pilgrimage to Rome

Before becoming the great triumph of Italian opera in England, Handel spent several years under the sun of the peninsula, where he immersed himself in the art of the transalpine masters and gave life to several sacred frescoes. – opera being then banned in the Eternal City. His talent is such that the ecclesiastical eminences gladly turn a blind eye to the Lutheran origins of the young North German. This is particularly the case of Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, a poet in his spare time, who in 1707 offered him the libretto of Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno [ The Triumph of Time and Disillusion]. The first Roman oratorio to be written by Handel, it was created in the palace of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the future Pope Alexander VIII, and lets you hear – almost see – the passionate exchanges between four allegorical figures. These debate the attitude to be adopted by Beauty, which oscillates between the “carnal” advances of Pleasure and the moralizing warnings of Time and Disillusion, the latter highlighting the merits of the beauty of soul for those who choose a life of asceticism. In the wake of their pioneering presentations on the stage of La Scala, Diego Fasolis and his Barocchisti present us here with an “original” reading of this masterpiece several times reworked by Handel, highlighting the high male registers that the choir is lucky to own,