Handel's Jephtha — With Michael Spyres, Joyce DiDonato, Mélissa Petit, Cody Quattlebaum, Jasmin White, and Anna Piroli

Handel's sublimely beautiful oratorio Jephtha comes to the Katowice Culture Nature Festival with a marquee cast including Michael Spyres, Joyce DiDonato, and Mélissa Petit, alongside Il Pomo d'Oro! The creation of this work, which recounts a tragic biblical tale, was itself fraught with poignancy as Handel struggled with encroaching blindness: upon completing the aria "How dark, O Lord, are thy decrees," he wrote in the score that he was "unable to go on owing to weakening of the sight of my left eye." Though he managed to complete Jephtha a few months later, it would indeed prove to be his last oratorio and his final large-scale masterpiece.

In exchange for victory in battle, the title character (a superb Spyres) makes a vow that unwittingly sentences his daughter Iphis (the widely acclaimed Petit) to an untimely death, a horrifying outcome presaged by his wife Storgé (mezzo-soprano extraordinaire DiDonato) — but in Handel's retelling, a divine reprieve spares her from her ignoble fate. Italian conductor Francesco Corti leads Il Pomo d'Oro, one of the world's most celebrated historically informed performance ensembles, in these cherished ultimate pages of Handel's storied career.

Photo © Julian Guidera
Joyce DiDonato appears courtesy of Warner Classics.