A majestically baroque theatrical cosmos that encompasses heaven, earth, and hell, with the Christian story of redemption unfolding on three levels that depict the struggle between darkness and light: this is the magnificent scenario that George Frideric Handel evokes in his Roman oratorio “La Resurrezione.” Nikolaus Harnoncourt will conduct this spiritual spectacle in Lucerne.

Strictly speaking, Handel dedicated himself to a forbidden art. For by the beginning of the 18th century, opera, or “drama told through music,” had become a disreputable art form in Rome, the pontifical capital; in fact, it had been banned by a papal edict. Even so, music-loving patrons soon found an outlet in a new genre, the oratorio, which accommodated the papal stricture by using material from the bible or from the lives of the saints. So it was that aristocratic opera fans did not have to entirely forswear their customary musical-theatrical pleasures.

Handel’s oratorio “La Resurrezione di Nostro Signor Gesù Cristo” was first performed on Easter Sunday of 1708 in the palace of a Roman marquess. The performance took place in a private theater which the musicians positioned in front of a monumental painting of the resurrection. The orchestra played under two conductors: the young Handel and the well-known Arcangelo Corelli. Meanwhile, five singers took on allegorical and biblical roles, playing the parts of angels and devils, the evangelist John, Mary Magdalene, and the wife of Cleophas—just as if this were a genuine operatic premiere But with that, the performance history of “La Resurrezione” ended and the piece remained dormant for another 250 years. It is only in the recent past that this composition from the early Italian period of Giorgio Federico Hendel (as his name was given in the libretto) experienced its resurrection in terms of music history. In fact, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus will perform this extraordinary music drama using a brand-new critical edition of the score—which makes this Lucerne performance akin to a second world premiere.

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