Wrapped up in a box of obscurity since the 17th century, Legrenzi’s Il Giustino will be heard by Australian audiences for the first time in 2023.

Giovanni Legrenzi was the Puccini of the 17th century, and Giustino his runaway smash hit. A classic rags-to-riches historic tale with an Italian language libretto by Nicolò Beregan, Giustino is based on the life of Emperor Justin I. Our hero grows up a farmer in a Dacian village, but joins the army and rises through the ranks, eventually reaching the most senior position of Captain of the Guards. Eventually Justin would retire from public military life, only to be crowned Byzantine Emperor. His story set to music in Giustino enjoyed revival after revival for more than 50 years after its 1683 premiere, and inspired composers like Vivaldi and Handel to set the same story to music.

Legrenzi’s gift for melody has been an unintentionally kept secret for much of the 20th and 21st centuries: only a handful of his arias have ever been performed or recorded. But with Giustino, and its more than 70 arias, his ability to spin an unending melodic thread, and capture all the nuance, shifts and changes in his characters, just leaps off the pages of the score.

In Legrenzi’s day, it’s said that the tunes from Giustino were so darn catchy that folks were singing, whistling and humming them for years after. In a sense, it became an opera of the people, bringing legendary events of the decline of the Roman Empire into the family home: royal lovers’ tiffs in courtly corridors of power, mighty sea battles, ghostly glimpses, and lamenting maidens chained to rocks waiting to be devoured by frightful sea monsters. Giustino has plenty of the conventions of Venetian opera, not forgetting the high comedy of characters in disguise which so delighted Italian opera audiences back then, and Sydney audiences afresh now. [And, to be fair, not many audiences in between – Giustino was revived only in 2007 for a single production in Germany – Ed.]

We welcome male alto Nicholas Tamagna, making his Pinchgut debut in the title role for this production. Legrenzi demands of all his characters that they open up about their joys, their sufferings, their thrills and pangs. Over the years, the operas we’ve chosen to present have often had a heroine at the heart of their stories – think Handel’s Theodora (2016), or Vivaldi’s Griselda (2011). In an age when women are demanding more from men in so many ways – fairer distribution of household tasks, deeper emotional connection, equality in the workplace, and an abandonment of centuries-old patriarchal structures – it will be interesting to see what our audience makes of this male-led tale of heroism and conquest. Let’s wonder together at what it might reveal about the enduring aspects of being in relationship, and what it means to be a man in today’s world.