'Eliogabalo,' Cavalli's 'lost' opera, at Staller

Historically, it hasn't paid to speak truth to power. But how about singing it? Stony Brook University musicologist Mauro Calcagno says that hasn't been a career builder, either. At least not for 17th century Venetian composer Pier Francesco Cavalli.

Because Cavalli wrote a shockingly frank libretto about royalty at a time when the power elite in Venice stifled all challenges to authority, his 1667 opera "Eliogabalo," dramatizing the life of notoriously lascivious Roman emperor Heliogabalus, was never performed in his lifetime. The "lost" opera of Cavalli, the foremost Venetian composer of his era, inheriting the mantle from Monteverdi, was the subject of Calcagno's doctoral dissertation at Yale in the early '90s. "I was intrigued that it had never been performed," says Calcagno, now a musicology professor at Stony Brook.

"It became my mission," he says. "I was something of a champion for it."

Following his "rediscovery" of the opera, "Eliogabalo" received its world premiere - nearly 300 years after it was written - in 1998 in Kreama, Italy, Cavalli's hometown. Calcagno consulted on the next two major productions, in Brussels and Aspen, Colo. Tonight and Sunday afternoon, it will be performed at the Staller Center Recital Hall, fully staged by the Stony Brook Opera and Baroque Ensemble.

ROMAN ORGIES

It's been called the "Don Giovanni" of the 17th century, but for Calcagno's money, "Eliogabalo" is far more licentious. "The emperor spent all his time chasing women," he says, "usually other men's wives. He was constantly putting pressure on his subordinates. So the opera deals with a contemporary issue - sexual harassment. Except in this case, it's the emperor, so there wasn't much recourse. The tension in Cavalli's arias of lament is tremendously emotional. . . . It has a heavy ending, which is historically accurate. But the church was powerful in Venice at the time, and conservative. Cavalli was told to rewrite it. When he refused, they brought in a replacement, who wrote a happy ending. The emperor repents."

PLAYING DRESS-UP

Jennifer Griesbach, a specialist in Baroque arts at Stony Brook, directs the Staller production with an international cast of singers from the university's prestigious music graduate program. It is performed in modern dress to emphasize contemporary relevance. David Lawton of the music department conducts. "We have an exceptional collaboration," Calcagno says, "between musicologists and performers."

"Eliogabalo" launches the school's new three-year cycle of Baroque, contemporary and standard operas.

WHAT

"Eliogabalo," the "lost" opera of Cavalli performed by the Stony Brook Opera and Stony Brook Baroque Ensemble. In Italian with English supertitles. Pre-perfomance lecture by professor Mauro Calcagno.

WHEN | WHERE

Friday night at 8 (lecture at 7), Sunday at 2 p.m. (lecture at 1), at Staller Center Recital Hall, Stony Brook University

INFO

$20, $10 students and seniors (lecture free); staller center.com, 631-632-2787