![]() ![]() When soprano Margot Rood’s Oreste delivered bad news to Alcina in silken, silvery song, Mercer’s arsenal of Disneyesque wicked-queen reactions almost stole the scene. On Sunday afternoon, soprano Shannon Mercer commanded the stage as readily as the devious Alcina ruled her isle, lacing her pliant soprano voice with increasingly potent venom as the plot progressed. (Women have always written music anyone who tells you otherwise is ignorant.) Her father was the prolific composer Giulio Caccini, and her sister Settimia also had a fruitful musical career. ![]() As a young teenager, she sang in the premiere of what is said to be the earliest surviving opera, Jacopo Peri’s “Euridice,” and a few years later, she worked as a court singer for the king of France. ![]() The Oxford English Dictionary records the first English-language use of the word “opera” in 1648, two decades after “Alcina.” Opera was not born fully formed like Athena from Zeus’s head, and Caccini (1587-after 1641) grew up in the thick of it. The production was helmed by the festival’s power trio of stage director Gilbert Blin with music directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs. Kathy Wittmanįor its annual Thanksgiving weekend chamber opera, Boston Early Music Festival this year presented a piece forged in the crucible of opera: Francesca Caccini’s 1625 “La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina” (The liberation of Ruggiero from Alcina’s island). Shannon Mercer portrayed Alcina in Boston Early Music Festival’s “La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina” at Jordan Hall. ![]()
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