Tim Carter – Lessons in Madness: Orlando Furioso on the Operatic Stage

Orlando furioso had a life in the European imagination well beyond the poem itself, and ranging from the visual arts to the operatic stage. The remarkably high number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century operas based on Ariosto’s characters—not least by Handel and his contemporaries—prompt new ways of looking at an art-form that was far more radical than often assumed. How did composers and librettists treat Ariosto’s good- and evildoers, what happens when music turns the latter into sympathetic figures, and how should modern productions grapple with the problems that ensue?—this illustrated lecture will answer those questions and more.

Tim Carter is the author of books on Monteverdi, Mozart, and American musical theatre, and most recently, of Understanding Italian Opera (Oxford University Press, 2015).