Opera Bites: 'Armida' casts a spell

The final high-definition broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera this season is "Armida" by Gioacchino Rossini. The Saturday performance begins at noon at the Town Plaza Cinema in Cape Girardeau.

All the information in this article is derived from the book "The Bell Canto Operas" by Charles Osborne. The libretto for the opera is based on the poem "Gerusalemme liberata" by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso. It tells the story of the pagan Armida and the Christian knight Rinaldo, who is a crusader in Jerusalem.

Many other operas about these two had been written before Rossini set the tale to music; these include the composers Lully, Handel, Salieri, Haydn and Gluck. Rossini's version premiered in 1817 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Italy.

The musicologist Francis Toye described the opera as "one long love scene whose sole merit lay in the fact that it inspired Rossini to write three splendid love duets." This might have been because he wrote the role of Armida for Isabella Colbran; she was his mistress and later became his wife.

The plot of the opera details the enslavement of the crusader Rinaldo by the enchantress Armida. She falls in love with him, but Rinaldo is rescued by his fellow knights. Armida is so infuriated by this that she calls upon the demons from hell to destroy her palace. She then escapes in a chariot drawn by dragons.

In this opera there is only one female role but there are six roles for tenors. All of the parts are demanding for the singers and, from what little I have heard of the music, very beautiful.

The director of this production, which stars Renee Fleming as Armida, is Mary Zimmerman.

"This opera is like a buried treasure, a box of jewels. 'Armida' has an epic, enchanted quality and a tremendous visual element," Zimmerman said of the opera.

Barb Herbert of Cape Girardeau is an opera lover and host of KRCU's "Sunday Night at the Opera."