Ercole (Hercules) has defeated the Kingdom of Oechalia and killed its ruler, Eutyro. Ercole loves Eutyro's daughter Iole, but she is betrothed to Ercole's son Hyllo. Venere (Venus), goddess of love, arrives with the Graces and decides to help Ercole win Iole by casting a spell on her. Hearing of Venere's work, the goddess Giunone (Juno) decides to thwart Venere and Ercole.
Act II
The lovers Hyllo and Iole learn of Ercole's interest in her. Giunone sings that she will stop Venere. Pasithea, one of the Graces, goes to the cave of Sleep to seek his help in Venere's plans.
Act III
Ercole is in a deep slumber. Iole moves to kill Ercole, seeking to avenge her father. Ercole is awakened by the god Mercurio (Mercury). Ercole believes Hyllo was trying to kill him and wants his son dead. Dejanira, Ercole's wife, pleads for their son. Iole promises she will accept Ercole if he will spare Hyllo. Ercole exiles his wife and orders Hyllo confined to a tower overlooking the ocean.
Act IV
Hyllo jumps from his tower into the sea intending suicide. But Giunone calls upon Nettuno (Neptune), god of the sea, to save Hyllo. Iole and Dejanira do not know of the gods' intervention and believe Hyllo dead. They go to the grave of Iole's father. Eutyro's ghost appears, warning Iole she should not marry Ercole. Venere continues her schemes by creating an enchanted chair. When Iole sits in it, she feels affection for Ercole.
Act V
In Hades, Eutyro and the other victims of Ercole sing. Licco, a servant of Dejanira, plots to disrupt the wedding. At Licco's behest, Iole offers Ercole a shirt soaked in the blood of the centaurNessus, who Ercole had killed. Ercole is poisoned by the shirt and dies. Giunone appears, triumphant, with Hyllo. He reunites with Iole. Ercole ascends to Heaven and marries Beauty.[7][8][9]
Composition
Venice in 1636
Antonia Bembo was born in the Republic of Venice circa 1640.[10] She had voice lessons from Francesco Cavalli in Venice in the 1750s and may also have studied composition under him.[11][12] Around 1676, she fled Venice to escape an abusive marriage and settled in Paris.[13] King Louis XIV heard her sing and awarded a pension.[13] She lived at the convent at the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle.[14]
Bembo's surving works date from the 1690s and 1700s.[13] "Bembo's compositions sometimes sound thoroughly French, at other times purely Italian. Not infrequently, she deploys both styles in one work and even tries to merge them."[15] In this Bembo was like her contemporaries Paolo Lorenzani and Theobaldo di Gatti–two other Italian musicians working in Paris under the patronage of Louis XIV.[16]
In 1707, she completed her new version of Ercole amante, using Francesco Buti's libretto from Cavalli's 1662 opera of the same name.[2] It had been commissioned by Cardinal Mazarin to celebrate Louis XIV's marriage (June 9, 1660) to Maria Theresa of Spain, but the death of Mazarin (March 9, 1661) and delays in constructing a new theater (Théâtre des Tuileries) meant Cavalli's opera was not performed until February 1662.[17] Buti's libretto was available to Bembo as it had been published the year of its premiere by the king's music publishers, the Ballard firm, with the Italian lyrics and a French translation on facing pages.[18] Forty-five years later, Bembo dedicated her version to Louis XIV–Marie Theresa had died in 1683–who had been referred to as the "Hercule Gaulois" ("the French Hercules").[19][20]
It was not common to recycle a libretto that old for a work written in a new style and unknown why it was written, since operas at the time were usually commissioned.[21] Bembo's style in Ercole is French in form with its dances and chorus but is set in an Italian style akin to Jean-Baptiste Lully, the leading Italian composer in France in the late Seventeenth Century, and André Campra, Lully's successor in that role.[16][22] There is no evidence that the opera was performed at the time,[16] although one scholar has stated the work was performed before Louis XIV in 1707.[23]Yvonne Rokseth attributed the lack of a staging to a change in musical tastes in France, Italian-style works like Bembo's having fallen out of favor.[24]
Stuttgart's Liederhalle, site of the 2023 premiere
Il Gusto Barocco premiered Ercole in a concert version on May 23, 2023, at the Liederhalle in Stuttgart.[27]Jörg Halubek conducted the performance from the harpsichord and Yannick Debus sang the title role.[27] A critic wrote of the premiere: "This is a mature work–the artist was born in the 1640s–whose style combines Italian and French influences around a Mannerist poetry with a somewhat tangled plot, including a magic seat and a poisoned tunic. The musical line is quite flattering, sometimes as disconcerting as it is daring. It is necessarily moving to hear a work resonate for the very first time more than three hundred years after its composition."[27] Another review was critical of the "copious and detrimental cuts" made by Halubek:
Recitatives are shortened ruthlessly to less than their bare bones. The entire excision of Juno asking Pasithea and her husband Somnus if she may borrow his rod (so that the dangerously randy Hercules can be lulled asleep) means that the alluring preceding music for Pasithea and her retinue . . . becomes isolated from its purpose. Act 5 scene 1 is an ombra tour de force that should have four of Hercules’ victims in hell taking turns to exult at impending vengeance, but it is shredded down to merely a sliver for one spectral gloater.
Il Gusto Barocco again performed the opera in a concert version during the Early Music Days festival in Herne on November 11, 2023.[30][31]Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln broadcast the concert live.[32]
Ars Minerva, an opera company that specializes in rarely performed works, will perform Ercole in San Francisco in November 2025.[33] It will star Zachary Gordin, Aura Veruni, Kindra Scharich, Maxwell Ary, and Sara Coudin; Céline Ricci is to direct the production and Matthew Dirst will conduct the music.[33] The Paris Opera with Capella Mediterranea is scheduled to perfom the opera in May 2026 at the Opéra Bastille.[34]Leonardo García-Alarcón is to conduct and Andreas Wolf is to sing the title role.[35]
Two arias from Ercole–"Mingannasti in verità" and "Volgete altrove il guardo"–were sung by Mariana Flores at a BBC Proms concert at Cadogan Hall on July 29, 2019.[36]
Roles
Roles, voice types, 2023 Stuttgart, 2025 San Francisco, 2026 Paris
↑ Prunières, Henry (1913). L'opera italien en France avant Lulli[Italian Opera in France Before Lully]. Bibliotheque de l'institut francais de Florence (Universite de Grenoble) 1. Ser. Collection d'histoire et de linguistique francaise et italienne comparees;(t.III) (in French). Paris: Édouard Champion. pp.282–288. OCLC2099182.
↑ Sadie, Julie Anne (1991). "Paris and Versailles". In Sadie, Julie Anne (ed.). Companion to Baroque Music. New York: Schirmer Books. p.106. ISBN0028722752.
Solomon, Jon (2024). "Hercules and Opera at the Court of Louis XIV: Ercole amante". In Stafford, Emma (ed.). Hercules Performed: The Hero on Stage from the Enlightenment to the Early Twenty-First Century. Metaforms: Studies in the Reception of Classical Antiquity, vol. 25. Leiden: Brill. pp.293–310. doi:10.1163/9789004696938_014. ISBN978-90-04-69575-7. ISSN2212-9405.
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