05-05-2025
Pimpinone review — Telemann's Royal Opera debut, 300 years later
The Royal Opera has taken a few centuries to stage an opera by Georg Philipp Telemann. With this production of Pimpinone, by the company's Jette Parker Artists at the Linbury Theatre, downstairs at the Royal Opera House, it's a case of one down, 34 to go.
And that's just the number of Telemann operas for which manuscripts have survived. He probably wrote more than 50 in all. He really was a one-man factory of baroque music. It's just a pity he delivered quantity more than quality.
That said, I'm not sure he is well served by Sophie Gilpin's staging of Pimpinone. Premiered 300 years ago as comic relief between the acts of Handel's tragic Tamerlano, it riffs on the classic Italian comedy
