Concert Opera: For Your Ears Only; Shedding the Visual Effects Makes the Medium More Accessible
George Frideric Handel wrote "Tamerlano" in 1724, and it has taken until now (7 tonight in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, to be precise) for its first performance in Washington. The opera has been well-recorded (on Erato), leaving no question of its quality; Handel is one of the great opera composers of all time.
But baroque opera is still an acquired taste. There may be 2,500 Washingtonians who have been waiting for a chance to see "Tamerlano" performed, but there probably are not 5,000 and certainly not the 10,000 or more who must be interested before the Washington Opera can plan a full-scale production. You can get that kind of number for "La Boheme" or "La Traviata," but not for baroque opera-certainly not for opera seria, a highly stylized though often beautiful genre featuring da capo arias sung in Italian. …
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