Astarto was born in Rome in 1715, during the Carnival season at the Teatro Capranica, in an Italian premiere that already testified to the maturity Bononcini had achieved in the genre of the dramma per musica. Five years later, in November 1720, the opera reached the King’s Theatre Haymarket in London in the form that this recording restores: a score reworked in close collaboration with the poet Paolo Rolli, with whom Bononcini had established a systematic artistic partnership as early as 1714. The intermediary between the two worlds was Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, who in 1719 had invited the composer to London as a leading figure of the newly founded Royal Academy of Music — an institution destined to become the principal battleground of early eighteenth-century European musical theatre. It was Astarto that opened that inaugural season, and it was this title that marked the London debut of the castrato Francesco Bernardi, known as Senesino, who would become one of the most celebrated singers of the age.

The remote source of the libretto lies in a tragédie lyrique by Philippe Quinault (Astarte, Paris 1664), which Zeno and Pariati radically transformed according to the demands of Italian dramma per musica, and which Rolli further adapted for the London audience. In the background, as the booklet of the critical edition curated by Giovanni Andrea Sechi suggests, lie the pages of Flavius Josephus: in the Contra Apionem the Hellenistic Jewish historian recounts the story of Abdastratos, King of Tyre, murdered by the foster sons of his nurse, whose successor was Astartos. From this remote historical root Zeno distils a narrative of extraordinary dramatic efficacy: Elisa, Queen of Tyre, wishes to elevate to the throne and to marriage the valiant Clearco, her Grand Admiral. But the name of Astarto, the legitimate heir believed dead, hovers like a disquieting presence over the political memory of the kingdom. Court intrigues, forged letters, covertly overlapping identities and amorous rivalries construct a plot in which the conflict between reason of state and private passion defines the dramatic axis of the entire action. What Zeno inherits from Quinault — and carefully preserves — is the tension between the public dimension of power and the irreducible claim of sentiment: a polarity that musical theatre of the Baroque renders with a depth that spoken drama rarely achieves.

From a musical standpoint, Astarto allows one to observe with extraordinary precision the fundamental traits of Bononcini’s operatic aesthetic. Where Handel’s dramaturgy tends to unfold according to grand formal architectures — in which the monumentality of the structures contributes to the construction of theatrical pathos, and the specific weight of each set piece is calculated in terms of an overarching design — Bononcini favours a more fluid and immediate conception of musical discourse. His theatre does not aspire to rhetorical grandeur: it aspires to expressive clarity. The arias are frequently more concise, the melodic line is constructed according to a principle of natural singability, the articulation of the affections unfolds through a language of great formal lucidity. It is an aesthetic that Francesco Geminiani, a pupil of Arcangelo Corelli and direct witness of the London performances, would describe as capable of astonishing the musical world with its departure from truncated and flat melodies — a quality that even Corelli, a composer devoted to the instrumental repertoire, would have recognised as a model.

Burney, as is well known, did not share this view. In his General History of Music (vol. 4, London 1789) the music historian declared himself unable to identify in the composition any originality or depth, attributing the opera’s success to a herd effect and to the unformed taste of the London public. It is a judgement that reveals more than it conceals: in his inability to separate artistic merit from the Bononcini-versus-Handel equation, Burney involuntarily restores to us the measure of the impact this opera had on its time. The fact that revivals of Astarto multiplied across at least twenty Italian cities and in at least sixty-three London performances between 1720 and 1730 cannot be explained solely by the superficiality of collective taste.

The London version entailed precise and well-defined interventions. Bononcini reduced the number of set pieces (from thirty-seven to thirty-three), shortened the recitatives, re-orchestrating some of them, and wrote new arias to accommodate the vocal characteristics of the available performers: Margherita Durastanti in the role of Elisa, Senesino in that of Clearco/Astarto, with a company that also included Maria Maddalena Salvai, Giuseppe Maria Boschi and Caterina Gallerati. The score thus became, as was regularly the case in Baroque theatre, a living and adaptable organism — not an immobile monument, but a system of performative possibilities.

The critical edition by Giovanni Andrea Sechi (2022), upon which this production is based, approached the layering of sources with philological rigour and dramaturgical awareness. Sechi, who also serves as scientific director of the Enea Barock Orchestra, chose to base the performance on the London version of 1720, privileging the score in its most complete and internationally recognised form. The orchestra, founded on 9 June 2018 on the occasion of a production of the Serenata Enea in Caonia in Italy, carries in its very name a homage to Johann Adolf Hasse: the two souls — Italian and German — of a composer who more than any other embodies the cosmopolitanism of eighteenth-century musical theatre. This is not a decorative choice: it is a declaration of method.

The recording documents the production presented at the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik in 2022, at the Tiroler Landestheater, on the evenings of 22, 25 and 27 August. At the helm of the Enea Barock Orchestra, Stefano Montanari offers a reading of constant vivacity and theatrical tension. A former concertmaster of the Accademia Bizantina, Montanari brings to his conducting work a familiarity with the Baroque repertoire that never resolves into routine: his baton articulates phrases with rhetorical precision, maintains sustained tempi without yielding to haste, and distinguishes — with rare intelligence — the moments in which Bononcini’s music calls for transparency from those in which it demands density. The orchestra responds with a compact and mobile sound, in which the quality of the strings — an agile and flexible fabric, never heavy — is enhanced by a continuo that lends the recitatives an indispensable dramatic vitality. The oboes of Omar Zoboli and Marc Bonastre Riu colour the arias with elegant restraint; the theorbo and archlute of Francesco Tomasi add a timbral register that in the most intimate moments acquires almost the quality of a thought spoken under one’s breath.

In the role of Clearco/Astarto — assigned in the London version to the extraordinary vocal gifts of Senesino, a contralto voice of rare power and flexibility — Francesca Ascioti delivers a performance of notable stylistic authority. The voice is distinguished by solidity of emission and careful phrasing, qualities that allow her to render with efficacy the ambiguous nobility of a character who lives in the shadow of his own concealed identity. The vocal line appears constantly governed, and the performer maintains throughout the entire arc of the opera — three acts, some forty numbers, an uncommon dramatic span — an expressive consistency that fully valorises Bononcini’s writing without ever forcing it towards mere effect.

In the role of Elisa, Dara Savinova confronts a vocally demanding part with technical assurance and a sensitive attention to the word. The Estonian mezzo-soprano renders the complexity of a queen who oscillates between political calculation and sentimental vulnerability, conferring upon the character a three-dimensionality that is not merely a matter of technique, but of dramatic intelligence. Ana Maria Labin, in the role of Agenore, imposes herself through the quality of her emission — a brilliance that can model itself without losing resonance — and through the persuasiveness with which she portrays a character driven by ambitions that the score leaves intelligently in shadow. Paola Valentina Molinari brings to the role of Nino a considered, almost sotto voce musicality: an effective contrast with the more assertive registers of the ensemble, which reveals how carefully Bononcini attended to the internal balance of the vocal company.

Theodora Raftis, in the role of Sidonia, constructs the character with precision and a sense of measure, giving relief to a figure that the plot holds in suspension between apparent innocence and hidden strategy; her voice, clear and well projected, restores that particular quality of the soprano that Baroque theatre employs to connote youth as a dramatic category before an anagraphic one. Luigi De Donato, in the guise of Fenicio — Clearco’s putative father, unwitting architect of decisive revelations — guarantees timbral solidity and a phrasing that knows how to be imposing without becoming heavy: a sonic presence that functions as the scenic basso continuo of the entire company.