Page 95 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book
P. 95
9 November 2019
La fedeltà premiata @ Silk Street Theatre, London
4, 6, 8, 11 November 2019
by Sam Smith
Elsa Roux Chamoux
There are many who wish for the same revival of interest in Haydn’s operas as Handel’s have
enjoyed over the past fifty years. There is still a way to go before such an ambition is truly
realised, but it is certainly encouraging that two of London’s great conservatoires are
presenting his works this November, with the Royal College of Music producing Il mondo
della luna later in the month, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama currently
performing La fedeltà premiata of 1781.
The complicated plot presents a number of love triangles or even quadrangles, but there is
one further twist. The opera is set in Cumae, where every year two faithful lovers must be
sacrificed to a sea monster in order to satisfy the goddess Diana. As a result, there is an
incentive for any two people who really do love each other to do their level best not to be seen
as an item so that their lover does not suffer the cruellest of fates.
If this, however, makes the plot seem, in the words of Dominic Wheeler, like ‘an episode of
ITV’s Love Island’ there is a more serious side to the dilemmas posed that this production
