Singer

At the height of his powers, Scarlatti arrived in 1703 from Naples, bringing with him the latest musical fashions. Although opera performances were banned there by Pope Innocent XII, the themes of Christian faith found new expression in the oratorio using the means of modern musical drama. George Frideric Handel was at the heart of the action as the harpsichordist in Scarlatti's Marian oratorio Il Giardino di rose and was able to close the 1708 oratorio season with his work La Resurrezione . A year earlier, the young Handel had written his psalm setting Dixit Dominus – a masterpiece of Baroque choral music. In 1720, Scarlatti was commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Acquaviva d'Aragona to compose his eponymous Messa di S. Cecilia

Knechtseden Early Music Festival

Kloster Knechtsteden

Countless composers have set the medieval sequence Stabat Mater dolorosa to music, from Josquin Desprez and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina to Krzystof Penderecki and Arvo Pärt. But perhaps the most famous version dates from the 1730s. At the age of just 26, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi died in the spa town of Pozzuoli near Naples after a failed attempt to overcome tuberculosis. He spent the last months of his life there in a monastery, working feverishly on his Stabat Mater . By then, he had enjoyed a meteoric career as a composer, with his operas in particular being popular with audiences both at home and abroad. After his early death, however, it was the Stabat Mater that immortalized his name to this day, becoming the most copied work of the time shortly after his last breath. A version with choral additions by his contemporary Benjamin Cooke will be performed in Knechtsteden.

When the young Handel was working on his Agrippina, which is to be performed this year at Halle Opera, he also lifted whole sections from the score of Octavia by his former superior in Hamburg, Reinhard Keiser – here, for the first time, you have the opportunity of comparing the two works. One point of interest is that the two title characters are the mother and first wife of the Roman emperor, Nero, who won legendary status as a persecutor of Christians, untalented musician and arsonist. In Keiser’s opera, Octavia, who is being urged by her husband Nero to commit suicide, uses cunning to save her life. On the advice of the philosopher Seneca, she appears to Nero as her own ghost and succeeds in making him relent.

Tenor

Johannes Gaubitz

Events

Past events

Sep 27, 2025

Knechtseden Early Music Festival · Concerto Köln

Sep 25, 2025

Knechtseden Early Music Festival · Concerto Köln

Future and recently performed repertoire

Singer in Dixit Dominus by Handel

Concerto Köln

Singer in Stabat Mater by Pergolesi

Concerto Köln

Fabius in Octavia by Keiser

Händel-Festspiele Halle

Singer in Messa di Santa Cecilia by Scarlatti

Concerto Köln

About

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