Orpheus v. Didone: Baroque Opera Showdown Comes To This Weekend's Washington Early Music Festival

Starting tonight, Washington area classical music fans will have a rare opportunity to hear two of the Baroque era's [17th and 18th centuries] greatest operas: Busenello and Cavalli's Didone, performed by Baltimore's Ignoti Dei Opera Company, near the campus of American University, in Northwest Washington; and Telemann's Orpheus, which is sung to a libretto which is a cosmopolitan mix of largely German, but also some Italian and French [corrected], and which will be produced by the Wolf Trap Opera company at the Barns of Wolf Trap, near Vienna, Northern Virginia. Both productions should be superbly sung and produced.

Further information [and critical reviews] is available at the site of the Washington Early Music Festival or at Charles Downey's ionarts.org Washington cultural site.

http://www.earlymusicdc.org/

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2006/05/classical-month-in-washington-june.html

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For those not yet prepared for a full afternoon or evening of outstanding Baroque Opera, the National Gallery of Art's superb Sunday evening music series is hosting two free, very high-quality, Italian Baroque Music programs on June 18 and 25; both evenings at 6:30 PM, at the West Building West Courtyard:

June 18

National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble
Venetian Renaissance music for choir and instruments
Presented in honor of Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting and in connection with the Washington Early Music Festival
Concert Notes are already available for this concert here.

June 25

Drew Minter, countertenor, and Tempesta di Mare
Virtuoso music from the late Italian Renaissance and early baroque periods
Presented in honor of Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting and in connection with the Washington Early Music Festival.

http://www.nga.gov/programs/music.shtm

The Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art also hosts free summer jazz evenings, Fridays, from 5 to 8:30 PM.

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Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting June 18–September 17, 2006

Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections
April 30–November 26, 2006

The Poetry of Light: Venetian Drawings from the National Gallery of Art
April 30–October 1, 2006

















Giorgione
Venetian, 1477/1478–1510
Three Philosophers, c. 1506
oil on canvas
123 x 144 cm (48 7/16 x 56 11/16 in.)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna

Image credit: (c) Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna With thanks.

http://www.nga.gov/images/decor/veniceinfo_fs.shtm