At the Paris Opera, from May 28 to June 14, Leonardo García-Alarcón conducts the rediscovery of “Ercole amante”, the only operatic work by composer Antonia Bembo (1640–1720). The Argentine conductor reveals the singular genius of an Italian composer with a remarkably dramatic life, who forged an original synthesis of the musical schools of her time. 
By Gilles Charlassier
Ten years after Eliogabalo, with which he made his Paris Opera debut in 2016, Leonardo García-Alarcón revives Ercole amante, the only opera by Cavalli’s pupil Antonia Bembo, in a production by Netia Jones starring Andreas Wolf, Julie Fuchs, and Ana Vieira Leite. Commissioned in 1707 by Louis XIV, who became the Italian composer’s protector after she fled to France to escape a violent husband, Ercole amante offers a striking synthesis of the lyric theatre of its time, and reveals a singular genius championed with passion by the Argentine conductor. Trained by Gabriel Garrido, whose assistant he was for several years before founding his ensemble Cappella Mediterranea in 2005, Leonardo García-Alarcón is one of today’s leading interpreters of seventeenth-century opera, and of Cavalli in particular, having conducted several staged productions of his works in major European opera houses.
Under what circumstances did you discover Antonia Bembo’s Ercole amante?
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