Miriways (1728), TWV 21:24
opera in three acts on a libretto by Johann Samuel Müller
Performance of the 1999 Bärenreiter Edition

PENTATONE presents Telemann’s rarely-performed opera Miriways (1728) with a stellar cast and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin conducted by Bernard Labadie. Star vocalists such as André Morsch (Miriways), Robin Johannsen (Sophi), Sophie Karthäuser (Bemira), Lydia Teuscher (Nisibis) and Michael Nagy (Murzah) offer a string of beautiful baroque arias and scenes in this German-language opera. Miriways is a piece about love, duty and truthfulness, and was based on political events from that time in Afghanistan and Persia that actually made headlines in European newspapers, demonstrating the eighteenth-century fascination for the Orient. The opera was recorded live during the Telemann Festival Hamburg in 2017.

The Akademie für Alte Musik is generally seen as one of the best period-instruments ensembles of today, and has a substantial PENTATONE discography, including CANTATA with Bejun Mehta (2018), as well as Handel’s Concerti grossi op. 6 (released in 2019 and 2020). Robin Johannsen featured on Handel’s Parnasso in festa (2017). André Morsch, Sophie Karthäuser, Lydia Teuscher, Michael Nagy and Bernard Labadie make their PENTATONE debut.

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Recorded live by Norddeutscher Rundfunk at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg on 24 November 2017 as part of the Telemann Festival Hamburg.