Saul

In the end, Saul himself dies and David takes the crown for himself.

With an oeuvre encompassing almost 70 operas and oratorios, George Frideric Handel is one of the most celebrated composers of the Baroque era. First performed in 1739 at the King’s Theatre in London’s Haymarket, his oratorio „Saul“ is a highly political drama that has lost none of its contemporary relevance. Despite its violence, the Biblical tale also provides space for great emotions: for the love story between Saul’s daughter Michal and David, as well as for the friendship between the latter and Michal’s brother Jonathan. Incidentally, Saul’s funeral march from the third act became famous in its own right after it was played at public funerals, such as those of Winston Churchill and George Washington.

This staged version by Claus Guth, who has directed a large number of Handel oratorios, celebrated its premiere in Vienna. He sees Saul „as an accurate study of a state, but also of a family, into which an outsider, a foreign body, intrudes and causes everything to explode.”

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