Le Triomphe du Temps et de la Désillusion by Händel, Du (2013/2013), Chef d'orchestre René Jacobs, Theater an der Wien, Vienne, Autriche

Bellezza, allegorical embodiment of beauty, fears change as she looks in her mirror: “You will always stay as you are. But I, the way I see myself in you, will not always be so beautiful. ”Piacere, although pleasure swears to beauty that it will never change. But Bellezza is full of doubts. Tempo, the allegory of time, and Disinganno, the allegory of disillusionment, make it clear to beauty that the lasting values ​​of life cannot be found in fleeting externality. Bellezza no longer wants to act as a vain monster and renounces senseless desires and unfaithful wishes. Georg Friedrich Handel spent the years 1707/08 in Rome, where opera performances were prohibited by a papal decree. Therefore, the then 22-year-old composed his first oratorio.Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno based on the libretto by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj is, alongside La Resurrezione, one of only two oratorios with Italian text in Handel's oeuvre. However, the work accompanied Handel throughout his life. Fifty years after its premiere at the Collegio Clementino in Rome, Handel revised it again towards the end of his life for the Covent Garden Theater in London with the English title The Triumph of Time and Truth .