Gluck is renowned for his revolutionary Orfeo ed Euridice, but his later masterpiece Paride ed Elena – a collaboration with the same innovative librettist Raniero de’Calzabigi - remains little known, and this will be its first London staging. In music of compelling originality and exquisitely lyrical beauty, this timeless romance charts the rash and ill-fated passion between the ardent Prince of Troy and the initially resistant Queen of Sparta, ‘the most beautiful woman on earth’. But the gods are watching over and are bound to interfere in the fragile lives of mortals.
“Ill-fated as we are, we’ll become the theme of songs by those as yet unborn” (Helen, in Homer’s Iliad).
Bampton Classical Opera, a finalist in the 2020 International Opera Awards, enjoys the strongest of reputations for its enlightened discoveries of the byways of eighteenth-century opera. Working with some of the finest emerging young professional singers, Bampton always delights with its superb ensembles and imaginative productions.