📅 Streaming date: 8 August 2025, 19:00 CET
🎟️ Available until: 2 August 2026, 12:00 CET
📍 Venue: Basilica di Massenzio, Roman Forum
🎥 Recorded on: 1 July 2025
🎤 Language: Italian
💬 Subtitles: Italian, English
▶️ Platform: OperaVision
🎼 Music: George Frideric Handel
🖋️ Libretto: Carlo Sigismondo Capece
🎻 Orchestra: Orchestra Nazionale Barocca dei Conservatori
🎧 Conductor: George Petrou
🎭 Stage director: Ilaria Lanzino
🎨 Set designer: Dirk Becker
👗 Costume designer: Annette Braun
💡 Lighting: Marco Filibeck
Cast:
Angelo – Sara Blanch
Maddalena – Ana Maria Labin
Cleofe – Teresa Iervolino
San Giovanni – Charles Workman
Lucifero – Giorgio Caoduro
In La resurrezione, George Frideric Handel’s Easter oratorio from 1708, the battle between despair and hope is reframed as a contemporary family drama. In her new staging at the Basilica di Massenzio for the 2025 Caracalla Festival, director Ilaria Lanzino abandons the strictly sacred lens and places the story in the emotional aftermath of a child’s death. “The death of Jesus is not presented as a biblical and sacred event,” she explains, “but as a human tragedy.”
Commissioned by Marquis Francesco Maria Marescotti Ruspoli during Handel’s Roman period, La resurrezione was first performed in a semi-staged version at Palazzo Bonelli in 1708. The oratorio alternates vivid scenes of conflict between Lucifer and the Angel with contemplative moments featuring Mary Magdalene, Cleophas, and St John the Evangelist. Lanzino draws a parallel between these characters and a modern family grappling with loss, asking whether faith can still offer solace in the face of mourning.
Baroque specialist George Petrou conducts the Orchestra Nazionale Barocca dei Conservatori and a strong cast led by Sara Blanch as the Angel and Giorgio Caoduro as Lucifer. Lanzino, making her debut at Caracalla, brings experience from acclaimed European productions seen on OperaVision, and proposes a staging rooted in the spiritual questions of our time.
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