A Message from Yuval Sharon

George Frideric Handel already had 38 operas under his belt when he suffered a catastrophic stroke in 1737. Restored to health, he began the opera that would become one of his only comedies: Xerxes. His near-fatal illness must surely have given him a renewed lease on life and respect for the cycles of nature so far beyond his control. As he sat down to set the introductory aria to the opera, I imagine this serene gratitude for life impacting the discovery of a melody that has since become among his most beloved arias: “Ombra mai fu.”

There is also something a little silly about the powerful king Xerxes, a king who’s in love with being in love, rhapsodizing about a plane tree—and this is part of what bewildered Handel’s contemporary audience at the disastrous premiere in 1738. Even though Xerxes is one of Handel’s most popular operas today, it certainly wasn’t what operagoers in Handel’s day were accustomed to seeing. The opera didn’t fit into either the recognizable tragic mode (opera seria) nor the full-on comedic one (opera buffa) not dissimilar from Mozart’s dramma giocoso, Don Giovanni. As our conductor, Dame Jane Glover, points out in her essay on page 8, Xerxes is much closer to the theater than the Baroque stage spectacles that were popular in Handel’s time: a “perfect triangle,” as she says, of words, music, and visuals. The opera toggles back and forth between the light and the dark.

Of the 42 operas written by Handel, Xerxes marks only the second appearance on the Detroit Opera stage of one of his works, the first being Giulio Cesare in 2012. The freedom and flexibility of his style, so close to how we listen to traditional jazz, may likely be a discovery for you with these performances. If you’re lucky enough to be hearing this opera as your first by Handel, I am sure the gracefulness of the music, performed by some of the best American artists singing this repertoire today, will have you yearning to hear his remaining 41!

Yuval Sharon The Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director