George Frederick Handel's first oratorio is perhaps most familiar in its English version, The Triumph of Time and Truth, but that is a later reworking of the original in Italian, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (1707), the version that appears on this marvelous 2008 Hyperion release. This complex work presents an interweaving of lyricism, drama, philosophy, and morality, and the allegorical libretto by Benedetto Pamphili concerns the intricate relations between four abstract characters: Tempo (Time) and Disinganno ...
Read More
George Frederick Handel's first oratorio is perhaps most familiar in its English version, The Triumph of Time and Truth, but that is a later reworking of the original in Italian, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (1707), the version that appears on this marvelous 2008 Hyperion release. This complex work presents an interweaving of lyricism, drama, philosophy, and morality, and the allegorical libretto by Benedetto Pamphili concerns the intricate relations between four abstract characters: Tempo (Time) and Disinganno (Enlightenment), and their offspring, Piacere (Pleasure) and Bellezza (Beauty). This symbol-laden text may seem to modern listeners unnaturally stilted and relevant only as an artifact of the Baroque era, but anyone who loves Handel's operas or his later sacred oratorios can take pleasure in the sumptuous music and not get hung up on the artificiality of the slow-moving and tedious narrative. Expertly performed on period instruments by the Academia Montis Regalis, under the direction of...
Read Less