Tamerlano

Once he settled in London, Handel almost single-handedly created a craze for Italian opera seria, a style of opera that was predicated on providing solo arias for star virtuoso singers; Tamerlano is one of his best-known, composed in less than three weeks of 1724 (in the same year he also composed two other operas which have entered the canon, Rodelinda and Giulio Cesare). The opera’s subject is the defeat of the Ottoman emperor Bajazet and his enslavement by the ruthless Tamerlano, and Tamerlano is regarded as the most genuinely tragic of Handel’s operas.

This “reimagining” by the flamboyant director (and designer of sets, costumes and lighting, and choreographer) Stefano Poda, who has a reputation for striking, symbolic staging, blends Handel’s score with “a new musical concept” by composer Kirill Richter that weaves in traditional Uzbek instruments – Tamerlano, aka Tamerlaine, Amir Temur or Tamburlaine, was the leader of the Tartars and is therefore claimed as an early Uzbekh (and this performance is presented by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation).  The sets feature monumental structures inspired by Timurid architecture, kinetic installations, and immersive lighting; and Poda has assembled more than 160 artists — singers, ballet dancers, the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, the State Choir, and a number of national ensembles — to create a world of music, movement, and visual poetry. The scale, ambition and expense are all impressive; as the blurb has it, “Dubai has never witnessed an operatic production of this magnitude”.

There’s a second performance on 11 January.