(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) returns this summer with Almira, the first opera by the celebrated and beloved Baroque composer, George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), in its first modern-day historically conceived production, offering three fully-staged performances at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on Friday and Saturday, June 21 and 22 at 7pm, and Sunday, June 23 at 2:30pm. All performances will be sung in German with English supertitles. 

Starring in the title role of Almira and making her Boston Early Music Festival début, will be soprano Ulrike Hofbauer. A native of Bavaria heralded for her “expressive passion” (Basellandschaftliche Zeitung), Hofbauer specializes in Baroque vocal and operatic repertoire; her busy performance career includes regular collaborations with ensembles such as Collegium Vocale Gent, L’Arpeggiata, La Chapelle Rhénane, L’Orfeo Barockorchester, and Cantus Cölln – among others – and under the direction of such esteemed artists as Andrew Parrott, Andrea Marcon, Gustav Leonhardt, Philippe Herreweghe and Christina Pluhar.

In 1703, an 18-year-old George Frideric Handel set out for the cosmopolitan city of Hamburg to start his musical career in the orchestra at the city’s flourishing opera house. Towards the end of 1704, the director of the Hamburg Opera, composer Reinhard Keiser, tapped Handel for an opportunity to compose his own opera. The result, Almira, was a great success with Hamburg audiences, combining German, Italian, and French influences into a crowd-pleasing spectacle of dance, comedy, and drama.

Even at this young age, Handel shows the genius that would make him a star in Italy and London. Numerous musical ideas and passages from Almira would find their way into Handel’s later works. The libretto by Friedrich Christian Feustking is itself based on the libretto by Giulio Pancieri for a Venice production in 1691. It tells the story of Almira, the newly crowned Queen of Castile, and her trials and follies in a quest for love. A cast of equally lovelorn characters joins her to navigate jealousies, duels, dungeons, and misunderstandings on their way to a joyously happy ending.

Members of the Almira directorial team will give a pre-opera talk 90 minutes prior to each performance and the orchestra will treat the audience to a fanfare 20 minutes before curtain. Tickets ($30 to $95) are available via the Mahaiwe Box Office at 413-528-0100 or online at  Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.