Handel Festival Japan

Time & Date: 16:30, Monday, 14. 1. 2013
Venue: Hamarikyu Asahi Hall, Tokyo
Soloists: Yukari Nonoshita (S: Alcina); Mutsumi Hatano (MS: Ruggiero); Nobuko Takahashi (S: Morgana); Makiko Yamashita (MS: Bradamante); Hirohisa Tsuji (T: Oronte); Masato Makino (B: Melisso); Nao Hirose (S: Oberto)
Choir & Orchestra: CANNONS CONCERT CHAMBER CHOIR & ORCHESTRA
Conductor: Toshiki Misawa

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Greetings from the Chairman: It is a pleasure to have you today for the 10th Handel Festival Japan (HFJ 2012) and thank you very much for joining us.; I would like to express our gratitude to our audience and the fabulous per formers from Japan and overseas, who have cooperated with our performance to date. Special thanks also go to the various cultural financial organizations and foundations, which have been supporting HFJ events financially, and not to mention the Handelian members' tremendous warm support. We would also like to sincerely thank a number of people who offered musical instruments and the venues to HFJ and those who wrote on HFJ activities in public. Of special note is that GEORG-FRIEDRICH-HÄNDEL-GESELLSCHAFT, Internationale Vereinigung, e.V. has been kindly endorsing HFJ. HFJ members are much honored to receive such special encouraging support. Although I will refrain from mentioning individual names, taking this opportunity, we would like to say a big thank you to all of you.; Today we are going to perform a Handel' s masterpiece opera ALCINA, in which Handel depicts tragic love story of Alcina the witch with his deepest empathy towards her. Handel is a composer with deep humanity. He adored the entire human existence including its ugliness and foolishness. In fact, it is his deep love for human beings that has become the greatest attraction of his operas.; Witches have never been allowed to have happy ending for their love stories, since it is their fate not to be permitted to fall in love with a human. That is why witches had become objects that Handel relates to with his deepest sympathy in his opera and that Handel has chosen witches as perfect subjects for his o p er as, such as Armida in RINALDO, Medea in TESEO, Melissa in AMADIGI and Alcina in ALCINA.; Witches play central roles in any of these "witch opera" of H a n del, however, ALCINA is the only opera which title comes from a witch' s name. In both name and reality, Alcina has become the central focus of the story and Handel stayed very close to her emotional world as much as he satisfied, and as a result, he has success fully conveyed beauty, sorrow and misery in his music. Let us experience Alcina' s inner world through his music today.; Toshiki Misawa; Chairman; Committee of Handel Festival Japan; (Translated by Naoko Oshima)