The Prussian court poet Giovanni Pietro Tagliazucchi wrote in the preface to his libretto for Carl Heinrich Graun's three-act opera seria "Silla", which was premiered in Berlin in 1753, that he himself merely "put this opera into verse".

She is "the happy child of a sublime spirit, adept in martial enterprises as well as in philosophical reflections and the lovely phrases of the beautiful muses".

The reference to the author of the prose draft, written in "excellent French", was intended for King Frederick II of Prussia, who was not difficult to guess at the time.

With the revival of the piece, which has not been performed for around two and a half centuries, Alessandro De Marchi has now opened the 46th Innsbruck Festival of Early Music in glamor.

Graun's "Silla" is about the dictator of the same name who wants to force Ottavia, the bride of councilor Postumio, to be his wife.

The historical role model for the figure, who before Graun had already been made into an opera hero by Georg Friedrich Handel and later by Johann Christian Bach and the young Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, was the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who surprisingly resigned as sole ruler after cruel terror.

Graun's Silla, too, rises in power to his head.

Only when his confidant Metello renounces his allegiance does he come to his senses, resign and give the pacified people back their freedoms.

Postumio and Ottavia are allowed to marry, while Silla's Mephistophelic adviser Crisogono is exiled.

The escalation of violence is well worked out in the libretto.

The characters and their motifs seem somewhat one-dimensional.

Perhaps behind the understatement customary at the time in Tagliazucchi's foreword there is also a subtle distancing of the librettist from the rather simply knitted plot of "Silla".

With the eponymous hero, who has been refined from despot to wise man and who subsequently justifies his actions as a state-preserving necessity, the author Frederick II celebrated himself not least as an enlightened monarch and advocate of those political ideals that he as crown prince at his court at Rheinsberg Castle in his writing “Anti-Machiavel” propagated.

As a friend of philosophy, the fine arts and music, he also had illustrious composers in his service there, such as the brothers Franz and Georg Benda, his flute teacher Johann Joachim Quantz, Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel and the brothers Johann Gottlieb and Carl Heinrich Graun taken.

In Innsbruck, Graun's "Silla" lasts four and a half hours with two breaks.

De Marchi puts the work up for discussion in its entirety.

He can afford it with the lively and colorful festival week orchestra and an excellent vocal ensemble.

The first act takes its time.

Varied arias are embedded between vividly narrative recitatives.

Increasingly, however, a dramatic pull sets in, which comes to a head towards the end.

Approaches to creating effective ensembles for the stage in the form of duets and a terzett are now making people sit up and take notice.

Italian cantabile and artistic ornamental singing

Above all, however, one cannot ignore the fact that Graun was an outstanding singer who, like Handel and Johann Adolph Hasse before him, learned Italian cantabile and artistic ornamental singing south of the Alps.

What remains in the memory is Silla's deliciously composed attempt, right down to the orchestral accompaniment, to inflame Ottavia, who was forced to come in.

Solemnly perfumed wind instruments underline Silla's lying languor and alternate in opposite vehemence with Ottavia's increasingly explosive, articulated defence, which shows the lascivious macho the limits of his power.

When Postumio bursts in, the argument escalates into a bel canto slugfest for and against tyranny.

Bejun Mehta in the title role, Eleonora Bellocci as the self-assured Ottavia and Samuel Mariño as Postumio do it ravishingly.

Four phenomenal countertenors – in addition to Mehta and Mariño, there are also Valer Sabadus as Metello and Hagen Matzeit as councilor Lentulo – outdo each other in the art of high male voices once celebrated by castrati.

The young Venezuelan shooting star Mariño scores with a sparkling, full soprano, extreme top tones without sharpness and perfectly balanced trills, but remains a bit pale in acting.

Hagen Matzeit seamlessly connects the registers of his impressive vocal range down to deep chest tones, strings his tone chains without aspiration and enchants with original cadences.

Sabadus confirms Metello's taming of the tyrant with unearthly beautiful cantilenas.

As Ottavia's mother, Roberta Invernizzi uses the enormous flexibility of her mezzo-soprano to pull the strings in the background, while the baritone Mert Süngü as the Machiavellian villain Crisogono pursues his goals with metallic coloraturas.

Georg Quander's Innsbruck production, which is as opulent as it is subtle in detail, will be co-produced by the Rheinsberg Easter Festival in 2023.

Jutta Dietrich's outfit imaginatively combines borrowings from Frederician fashion with ingredients from other times, from theater costumes for Roman dramas to Prussian military uniforms to modern pleated skirts.

Roman ruins in the background quote Rococo painting.

After the premiere, Frederick II wanted nothing to do with a retreat into solitude, as Silla announces at the end of the opera.

Three years later he started the "warlike enterprise" that brought Prussia into possession of Silesia and established it as a major European power.