Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Jun 16

Bembo's 1707 'Ercole Amante' Gets First Fully Staged Paris Opera Run After 300 Years

Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Jun 16

Bembo's 1707 'Ercole Amante' Gets First Fully Staged Paris Opera Run After 300 Years

Q: Why does a 1707 story of a powerful man's desires feel so shockingly relevant today?

It feels relevant because the opera is not really about mythic heroism; it is about power, entitlement and a man who refuses to accept a woman’s “no.” That dynamic remains painfully familiar. Bembo’s *Ercole Amante* centers on Hercules, an aging ruler-figure who decides he is entitled to his son’s fiancée, Iole, and tries to use status and divine backing to get her. Modern audiences immediately recognize the pattern: an older powerful man treating desire as a right and a younger woman’s refusal as an obstacle rather than a boundary. That is why the Paris staging was described as feeling “ripped from the headlines.” The production sharpened that connection on purpose. Director Netia Jones presented Hercules less as a distant classical hero than as a contemporary type: a seedy, self-important older man surrounded by luxury, excess and aides. Details such as hamburgers and Lagerfeld-like footmen translated a 1707 court opera into a recognizable modern world of celebrity, privilege and impunity. The opera also gains force from who wrote it. Antonia Bembo was a woman who fled an abusive husband, sued for divorce and rebuilt her life under royal protection in Paris. Her own experience of male power and female vulnerability gives the work an added charge. The belated premiere also reflects another modern issue: how women composers were sidelined for centuries. So the shock is not that the story is old. It is that the behavior at its center is not.

3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 16

Paris Opera last month gave Antonia Bembo’s 1707 “Ercole Amante” its first fully staged production, more than 300 years after the work was written for Louis XIV.
The opening was delayed by 2 days after a strike by opera personnel forced cancellation of the scheduled first night.
The Baroque opera centers on an aging Hercules pursuing his son’s fiancée Iole, with Venus aiding him and Juno intervening — a plot the review says feels strikingly contemporary.
Bembo, a Venice-born composer and singer trained by Francesco Cavalli, fled an abusive marriage and found refuge at Louis XIV’s court, adding historical weight to the revival of a little-known female composer.