Der in seiner Freiheit vergnügte Alcibiades

In the organizer's words:

La libertà contenta / Baroque opera in three acts by Agostino Steffani

Libretto by Bartolomeo Ortensio Mauro / German translation for the Hamburg Opera 1697 by Gottlieb Fiedler / in German with surtitles

Alcibiades, expelled from Athens, goes into hiding incognito in hostile Sparta, where Timea, the fiancée of the Spartan king, falls for his charms. At the same time, the Athenian princess Aspasia falls into the clutches of the Spartans and remains unrecognized thanks to her false identity as a slave. The fact that not only the king but also general Lysander has his eye on her, while her fiancé Pericles searches for her throughout Sparta and Alcibiades is not averse to her either, leads to a furious game of mistaken identity in which jealousy, intrigue and great emotions are not neglected, but in which the love of freedom is to triumph over all convention.

Agostino Steffani, a native of Padua, was a wanderer between worlds. Ordained as a priest in Rome, he caused a sensation in Germany as a composer. In addition to Hanover and Düsseldorf, he also worked in the Electoral Palatinate as Rector of Heidelberg University in 1703/04.