Cavalli was commissioned to write this to celebrate the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa, the infanta of Spain, which is why we have the unusual phenomenon of a prologue with people singing in Italian about how great the French king is. It wasn't actually performed at the wedding due to the stage machinery being out of order (I'd be very curious about what exactly it was felt that that was essential for); they replaced it with another Cavalli opera. This one was debuted a few years later, still featuring references to the wedding in the prologue. Our ol' pal Lully insisted on inserting ballet numbers into it, and when they proved more popular than Cavalli's own music, he helpfully took full credit for the opera's success (it was also probably a bad idea to include castrato roles, given the French aversion to those). Cavalli was so miffed by the experience that he declared himself through writing operas, although he quickly reversed course on that.
The story comes from Sophocles and Ovid. Ercole is in love with his son Hyllus' wife Iole (in spite of still being married to Deianira). He pursues her, and he's going to kill his son so he can have her, but she agrees to go with him in exchange for Hyllus' life. Deianira hatches a plan to bring Ercole down by giving him the skin of Nessus the centaur to wear, not realizing that it's going to be fatal. But it is, and he dies. But never fear! He's been reborn in Heaven! Hurray! There are also a whole bunch of gods running around and interfering with stuff, most notably Juno. Ercole's page and his herald Licco also have large comic-relief roles.
The first thing that has to be said is that Ercole is quite a huge douchebag here. Maybe that was obvious from the description, but really now. And of course cultural sensibilities change, but it's hard for me to see how we could ever not have been seen as such: was threatening to murder your son to steal his girlfriend ever considered a cool thing to do? Still, the libretto does explicitly compare him to Louis XIV, so what do I know?
A modern production is, naturally, going to emphasize his oafishness--how could it not? Actually, this whole thing is go-for-broke zany (though it does try to be somewhat serious for Ercole's death). Most visibly and memorably, Ercole (as depicted by Luca Pisaroni, who seems to be enjoying himself) is wearing a plasticine shell to make himself look like an action figure, complete with notches where the joint articulation would be (and at one point he complements this with leather pants, a leopardskin shirt, and a gold chain). I think it's a good choice; you wouldn't want to be po-faced when telling a story that, no two ways about it, is going to seem goofy to us, even if it didn't to them. But it probably did to them. Really now. Still, I feel that that does perhaps undermine what should be dramatic moments a bit: when we first see Hyllus and Iole together, in what's supposed to be a romantic scene, he's depicted as this totally oblivious manchild, more or less ignoring her (at one point we see him playing a Gameboy Color). The sort of eulogy that everyone sings after Ercole's death (and before Juno shows up to say, hey, cheer up! everything's fine!) is actually really effecting, but...how to take any of this even a tiny bit seriously?
Still, I liked it a lot. You can easily just get lost in the music, written in a French style (to the extent that I can identify that), with rudimentary yet recognizable arias. And the production IS amusing, for sure. My favorite performance was Anna Bonitatibus (there's a name for you) as a glamorous Juno.
It's interesting: the Cavalli operas I've seen thusfar have all been very tonally different: La Didone is pretty much a pure drama in spite of the added happy ending, whereas all the others are various degrees of comedy. At any rate, I look forward to seeing more of his work. Oh, and I have to say it: my first 1660s opera! Now I've seen at least one from every decade of the seventeenth century! Whooooooo!
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