Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Keiser: Pomona

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Apples and pears are ripe now and dropping from the bough. Pomona is the name the ancient Romans gave to the fruit tree nymph. There is a Tuscan legend about her and her male consort, the shape-shifter spirit, Vertumnus. These two figures, along with the more familiar classical deities, were taken up into a delightful baroque operatic pastorale, "The Triumph of Fruitful Pomona" (1702) by Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739).

Keiser helped to bring German opera into being. He wrote operas for Hamburg's "Goose Market" theater, but this pastoral piece, styled an operetta, was written as a celebratory entertainment for the birthday of Friedrich IV, King of Denmark. (The Free City of Hamburg cultivated good relations with Denmark.) Scored for nine singers and nine instrumentalists, this is really a chamber opera in scale. It may remind you of the masque, Acis and Galatea (1718) by Handel. What is presumably the world premiere recording of Keiser's Der Sieg der fruchtbaren Pomona was made in 2010 in co-production with Deutschlandradio Kultur. The singers and players of the Capella Orlandi Bremen were directed by Thomas Ihlenfeldt. The German CPO label released Pomona in 2014 on two compact discs.

Pomona follows my broadcast on Sunday, June 27th, 2004 of Keiser's Croesus (1710/rev. 1730), performed by the Clemencic Consort (Nuova Era CDs, 1990).