Aufführungsfoto © Padraig Grant
Germany’s Internationale Händel Festspiele Göttingen is currently performing the composer’s final opera Deidamia directed by its conductor George Petrou who is also the festival’s Artistic Director. His production originated last fall at Ireland’s Wexford Festival and again stars Belgian soprano Sophie Junker in the title role.
Today’s Grand Tier Grab Bag features Junker in the heroine’s fierce third-Act aria “M’hai resa infelice” from the Wexford broadcast. Another gem from Deidamia is included on her fine La Francesina CD consisting of arias composed by Handel for French soprano Elisabeth Duparc.
Next season, Junker, a specialist in baroque opera, moves from Greece to Rome when both Vienna and Versailles present a real obscurity: Giuseppe Porsile’s 1728 Spartaco.
Deidamia may be undergoing a rebirth as it’s rumored to be the next project in R.B. Schlather’s Handel series produced at Hudson Hall. A mostly light-hearted work drawn from Greek myth, the opera features another of Ulysses’s adventures, one in which he encounters Achilles dressed in drag! That episode, however, will not be featured in another of this year’s Ulysses-focused projects: The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated IMAX epic which opens on July 17th.
Deidamia was a rare baroque departure for Wexford which returns to 19th and 20th century works in October with Rossini’s L’equivoco stravagante, Prokofiev’s The Gambler, and Mascagni’s Iris. The festival, long been known for casting rising young singers, presents a rare established star, Joseph Calleja, as Osaka in the Mascagni.
Handel: Deidamia, “M’hai resa infelice”
Sophie Junker
Conductor: George Petrou
Wexford Festival
18 October 2025
Broadcast
