IU Baroque Orchestra to perform 268-year-old opera

Nearly 268 years have passed since Ignaz Holzbauer’s opera “Hypermnestra” was last performed in front of an audience.

The IU Baroque Orchestra, six music school vocalists and Wabash College musicology professor Larry Bennett ended that streak Feb. 22 when they performed the opera at Wabash College.

The orchestra and singers will perform “Hypermnestra” in a second show at 4 p.m. Sunday in IU’s Auer Concert Hall.

The group and Bennett have been working together for months to produce the show, which is considered by experts to be one of the earliest full-length German operas produced in Vienna.

Bennett said he rediscovered the piece in 1995 after he received a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service to study early 18th century music manuscripts for a month.

“The main story is based on Greek mythology,” Bennett said. “The characters are very human and have real emotions. ... It is a fun piece.”

Bennett was the first American to work with Meiningen, Germany’s Max Reger collection of manuscripts. While studying, he said the published date – 1741 – on the “Hypermnestra” score caught his attention.

He said he liked that the opera was published earlier than any of the other manuscripts and that it was the only work written in German.

“When you find great music, it is like archeology ... you just get this thrill,” Bennett said.

The opera is based on a Greek tragedy that revolves around a woman named Hypermnestra, who is forced to choose between allegiance to her father and the love she has for her husband.

“This is not your average opera,” said sophomore Alize Rozsnyai, who will play Hypermnestra. “It has a really intense story plot the whole time.”
Bennett said he turned to IU for its early music institute        program when he was looking for performers.

“IU has a great early music institute, one of the best in the world,” Bennett said.
The opera will be performed in German, but Bennett said every line will be translated into English and projected on a nearby screen.

“Since it is so dated, there were no precedents and no recordings of the songs,” Rozsnyai said. “It was a real challenge to learn, but really rewarding.”

IU’s Baroque Orchestra will play instruments modeled after those of the 18th century.

“The instruments we are using are original and modern replicas that are set up in the way and time that the music was written,” conductor Stanley Richie said.

Of those instruments, Richie described stringed instruments with different shapes and strings, oboes and flutes with only a couple of keys, horns without valves and other wind instruments made of different types of wood.

He said because most baroque wind instruments have fewer keys, the students have to make some pitches by moving their lips.

“The sound is much different,” Richie said. “It is much warmer than its counterpart.”
Bennett said the opera touches on a variety of subjects such as jealously, love, forgiveness and war, emphasizing that the characters really come alive through the music.

“It is unlike anything I have ever seen,” Richie said.