RICCARDO PRIMO

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra, Honour and Justice as Shield and Crown

One of Georg Friedrich Händel’s most ambitious operas. This was composed to celebrate the accession to the throne of the second monarch of the House of Hanover, George II. The choice of the noble crusader king was intended to exalt the monarch’s virtues through the historical figure of Richard I of England, known as Richard the Lionheart. Beyond its propagandistic context, however, the work possesses exceptional dramatic and human depth, centred on honour and justice during the Crusades in Cyprus. Händel unfolds a score of heroic brilliance in which vocal virtuosity is not mere ornamentation, but the expression of the power and integrity of a sovereign trapped between political duty, personal passion and tyranny. Paul Agnew’s contemporary and deeply theatrical vision —even in concert performance— restores vital pulse to an opera that is perhaps less frequently staged than it deserves. 

Les Arts Florissants rescues this fascinating Händel opera from oblivion on its fifth visit to the Palau de les Arts. The prestigious ensemble, directed on this occasion by Paul Agnew, has assembled a formidable cast of fresh and emerging voices led by the new sensation among countertenors, Hugh Cutting, in the role of Riccardo Primo, originally created at the historic premiere by the celebrated castrato Senesino. The young British singer is joined by French soprano Mélissa Petit, a regular collaborator of Cecilia Bartoli and leading period ensembles, as well as mezzo-soprano Juliette Mey, laureate of William Christie’s Le Jardin des Voix 2023, the baroque singers’ academy of Les Arts Florissants.