OPERAWISE: Opera Seria

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Opera seria, traditional Italian serious opera, developed in the mid-1600s and lasted into the early 1800s. Handel's Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar), an opera from 1724, is a great masterpiece and an examplar of the genre; another is Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (aka Orphée et Eurydice, aka Orpheus and Euridice, 1762/1774).

Musical examples on the podcast drawn from recordings of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Les Musiciens du Louvre conducted by Mark Minkowski (Archiv 1999); Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, Della Jones and Mark Tucker with the City of London Baroque Sinfonia conducted by Richard Hickox (Virgin Classics 1988); Gluck's Alceste, Kirsten Flagstad and Geraint Jones Orchestra conducted by Geraint Jones (Decca 1956); Ercole sul Termodonte, Topi Lehtipuu and Rolando Villazón conducted by Fabio Biondi (Virgin Classics 2009); Giulio Cesare, Anne Sofie von Otter, Marijana Mijanović, Magdalena Kožená, and Les Musiciens du Louvre conducted by Mark Minkowski (Archiv 2002); also Giulio Cesare, Derek Lee Ragin and Concerto Köln conducted by René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi 1991); Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice, Maria Callas and Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, 1961; and Seattle Opera's 2015 production of Semele conducted by Gary Thor Wedow.