il Gardellino

‘An oratorio full of powerful emotion’, read the announcement in the local newspaper. And indeed, on March 17, 1762, just before Easter, Hamburg discovered this to be true, when it first heard Telemann's Tag des Gerichts, one of his most impressive works. In his latter years, Telemann managed to incorporate the new Classical style into his Baroque music wonderfully well. The lyrical libretto - about the struggle between believers and unbelievers - is highly dramatic and brimming with striking images that are simply crying out for the most beautiful and surprising effects. A work emphatically on the borderline between church and stage.