Spinalba – review

Guildhall School of Music and Drama, LondonThe only opera by the Portuguese composer Francisco António de Almeida that survives complete, Spinalba went missing for 200 years until the manuscript was rediscovered in the 1960s. First performed in Lisbon in 1739, Spinalba is contemporary with Handel's last operas, but instead of looking back to the baroque, it anticipates classicism. The plot echoes Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: a woman disguises herself as a boy to enter the service of the lover w...

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