Markgräfliches Opernhaus, Bayreuth, 4 September 2025
Francesco Cavalli: Pompeo Magno
Pulcinella with his pointed hat, sneering dwarfs, transvestites with padded bare chests in revealing décolletés, mad old people, and clerics in velvet gowns: in the Margravial Opera House, life bursts forth with bizarre masked figures. Strictly speaking, Francesco Cavalli’s rarely performed opera Pompeo Magno is about the victorious consul Pompey and is set in Rome. But placing it amid the Venetian carnival of the 17th century makes sense: the work was first staged in Venice in 1666, and its music thrives on the spectacle, well matched with the expanded cast of characters and extras.
In its short history, the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival has established itself as an exclusive event for early music. Despite ticket prices reaching over 300 euros in the top category, it enjoys wide popularity. One reason is its focus on rarely heard Italian musical dramas of the 17th and 18th centuries. Perhaps the strongest reason, however, is the artistic vision of festival director Max Emanuel Cencic, who shines both as a director and as the singer he first became known as.
Elsewhere, baroque operas are often staged in bleak concrete settings with radical, senseless updates to the present day—as in the recent Salzburg production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Cencic, by contrast, offers visually appealing productions where the eye is rewarded as much as the ear. He has flair, wit, a sense of taste and entertainment, and a sure instinct for which forgotten operas deserve to be rediscovered.
Pompeo Magno is one of those works. Following the style of its time, recitatives and arias differ only slightly, with arias accompanied by solo instruments that occasionally add lovely melodies, strong emotions, or rhythmic drive. Cavalli uses brief instrumental ritornellos to enrich the voices and provide color. There is even a short duet—extremely rare for the period.
The Capella Mediterranea under Leonardo García-Alarcón brings out these colors with vivid instrumentation: violins, cornetts, recorders, and, strikingly often, trombones.
Helmut Stürmer’s stage shows a 17th-century palazzo with Venice’s winged lion above the façade and tall pointed windows. Simple props create many effective scene changes, sometimes using the full stage, sometimes smaller playing areas, even the apron in front of a curtain used as an inner stage. Corina Gramosteanu’s sumptuous costumes of fine fabrics, mostly in period style, add further visual splendor.
The plot soon turns from Pompey’s triumphant entry to a web of love intrigues. Pompey desires Caesar’s daughter Giulia (bright soprano: Sophie Junker), but she rejects him—she is with the younger Servilio (mischievous and playful: Valer Sabadus). Pompey’s son Sesto fares no better in his love for Queen Issicratea, who remains faithful to her husband Mithridates, believed dead.
In Cencic’s staging, laced with irony and coarseness, dwarfs and mad old men repeatedly mock both Pompey and his son. At times, the stage feels like a circus—trombones producing deliberately rough, jazz-like “dirty notes,” and a flamboyant transvestite belting out high notes like a pop star.
Cencic himself does not portray Pompey as a virile hero, but as an aging man with grey in his hair. Whether Cavalli intended that is unclear, but the choice fits the libretto and suits Cencic’s voice: at 48, his countertenor sounds somewhat thin in the middle range, but well judged for a role that is not central to the drama.
The more demanding countertenor role is Sesto, superbly sung by Nicolò Balducci, who pours out tender devotion to Issicratea, Queen of Pontus. With elegant, supple tone, he conveys both passion and nobility, resisting any impulse to force his desire with violence.
Issicratea herself, sung by Mariana Flores, spurns him fiercely. Flores’ soprano is tall, full, and rounded, agile across the range, and brilliantly clear at the top.
The drama reaches its height in an attempted murder and a murder. Both times Mithridates, Issicratea’s husband, is the aggressor. He first tries to kill Pompey to live freely again with wife and son—but his son Farnace (another fine countertenor: Alois Mühlbacher) stops him, having found in Pompey a kind foster father. Mithridates’ second victim, Issicratea’s maid Arpalia, is not so fortunate. He kills her in revenge for trying to pair his wife with Sesto.
Valerio Contaldo, darker in tone than Balducci and Mühlbacher, makes a convincing Mithridates: fiery and bold, yet later transformed into a noble man who confesses his crime and frees Sesto, wrongly accused by his own father.
Sophie Junker as the sharp-tongued Giulia and Valer Sabadus as her lover Servilio are also highlights in a consistently strong cast, all of whom commit fully to their roles with fine voices and deep engagement.
