Ambleto

In 2021, the Theatre for Lower Saxony in Hildesheim commissioned the completion and new arrangement of the lost opera Ambleto by Francesco Gasparini. The work was premiered in 1705 at the Teatro Cassiano in Venice with great success. As only the songbook from 1712 has survived, but not the score, I decided to preserve the core of the baroque masterpiece, but to recompose all the recitative parts anew in the spirit of contemporary music theatre, transforming some of the arias into ensembles and orchestrating them anew. The premiere in September 2022 under the musical direction of Florian Ziemen was a great success. Amy Stebbins directed, Anna Siegrot designed the stage set. The production of the world premiere is set in the 1930s in one of the many dictatorships of the time. Arno Lücker from Opernwelt and many others wrote favourably about the successful and contemporary hybrid of old and new. On 3 September 2022, the musical theatre work was premiered with great success as part of a so-called Hamlet project (consisting of ballet, opera and drama). This was followed by 10 further performances in Gütersloh and Nienburg/Weser, among others.

There are a total of 7 vocal parts (dramatic soprano, dramatic mezzo, lyric soprano, dramatic tenor, lyric tenor, high and medium baritone and a mixed choir). For the premiere, the title role was sung by a baritone. However, the part is arranged so that the Ambleto can also be sung by an alto, as in the original from 1705. The orchestra is scored as follows: 2 flutes (recorders and/or transverse flute), 2 oboes (2nd oboe can also be cor anglais or oboe). Oboe also English horn or oboe da caccia), 1 bassoon, 2 horns in F (or natural horns in Bb), 2 trumpets (or baroque trumpets in C), 2 timpani, percussion (2 players), harpsichord, theorbo and lute, strings (6 first and 5 second violins, 4 violas, 3 violoncellos and 2 double basses, electronic pre-recorded samples.

The libretto for Ambleto, written by Pietro Pariati (who also worked with Handel, among others) and Apostolo Zeno, does not follow the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet. However, by focussing on the power and spiral of oppression of a usurper who despises humanity and, above all, women, and his downfall as a result of a carefully planned intrigue that repeatedly threatens to fail, as well as the dubious lieto fine, which leaves many questions unanswered about the dubious methods of the title hero Ambleto, who ultimately seizes power, the work reflects the increasingly authoritarian power structures in many countries around the world more than ever before. Even though the work is historically set at Helsingborg Castle, Hamlet's seat on the east coast of Denmark, a temporal limitation, as we find in the Amblethus tale by the Danish historian Saxo Grammatikus (around 1060-1216), was deliberately avoided.