Nicholas Tamagna

As the imperious title empress, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato leads the Met premiere of Handel’s tale of deception and deceit. Harry Bicket conducts Sir David McVicar’s wry new production, which gives this Baroque black comedy a politically charged, modern updating.

In Handel's oratorio Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (1707), the desire to live is at odds with the realisation of one's own mortality. In his early masterpiece, the composer was able to open up clear emotional spaces to the simultaneity of the incompatible. What does it mean to be alive - and what does it mean to demand to be fulfilled with this life? And who am I when the mirror only gazes at me in silence? In Handel's music the questions begin to float.