STEFFANI : NIOBE, REGINA DI TEBE

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 12th of September 2010 at 3.04 - 6.15 pm

STEFFANI: Niobe, Regina di Tebe, an opera in three acts
Niobe........................... Alexandra Coku
Anfione......................... Jacek Laszczkowski
Manto........................... Chelsey Schill
Tiresia........................... Luís Rodrigues
Clearte.......................... Pascal Bertin
Creonte......................... Peter Kennel
Poliferno....................... Leandro Fischetti
Tiberino........................ Musa Nkuna
Nerea........................... Luisa Francesconi
Teatro São Carlos Orch/Sebastian Rouland  
(recorded in Teatro São Carlos, Lisbon by Radio Spain)

BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
INTRODUCTION 
SYNOPSIS
CHARACTERS

This is all very cosmopolitan and international: Agostino Steffani (1654 - 1728) was an Italian composer, and his Italian opera Niobe (a Roman story of the poet Ovid about legendary Greece) was first performed in Munich in 1688, and not revived till 2008 (at present it is playing at the Royal Opera House in London); this performance was recorded in Portugal by Radio Spain. Of special note is the role of King Anfione, played by a male soprano (presumably sung by a castrato at the first performance). All the reports say that this work deserved to be resurrected. Niobe was the Queen of Thebes (as the Italian title tells us); this was the Thebes in Greece, not the one in southern Egypt. She is full of hubris (as they say in Greek): overweening pride which expresses itself in violence to others; she is such a hard woman that in the end she turns into stone. Anfione is a counterpart to Orpheus with his lyre and sweet voice, spreading harmony; but when the gods punish Niobe by destroying their palace and their children, he kills himself in despair.