Free for students: Harmonia Universitatis concert series brings opera to University of Tartu’s assembly hall

On 17 September at 18, the Opera Studio of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre presents Alessandro Scarlatti’s opera L’honestà negli amori (“Honesty in Love Affairs”, 1680), reconstructed by Estonian composer Eduard Tubin, at the University of Tartu’s assembly hall. This is the first time the opera will be performed in Estonia.

The concert performance will be preceded at 17:00 by a talk in which the musical director Mihhail Gerts introduces the opera, its history and reconstruction, and the project to bring Eduard Tubin’s Drottningholm materials to Estonia and digitise them.

After fleeing Estonia, Tubin began work in September 1945 at the archive of the Drottningholm Palace Theatre in Sweden, where he spent nearly three decades organising performance materials for early music. Scarlatti’s L’honestà negli amori is one of the most remarkable examples of Tubin’s work during his Drottningholm period. Only the basso continuo part of the original opera has survived, and Tubin’s orchestration remains the only existing version of the work with orchestral accompaniment.

The reconstruction of L’honestà negli amori required more than two years of meticulous work from Tubin. In creating the reconstruction, he sought to remain as faithful as possible to Scarlatti’s style and to capture the composer’s musical intentions. The result is a musical dialogue spanning more than two centuries – a unique whole interweaving passionate relationships, dramatic events, and comic moments.

L’honestà negli amori is a Baroque opera centred on the testing of lovers’ emotions. The story unfolds through passionate relationships and unexpected twists, as the characters must choose between love, honour and loyalty. Alongside dramatic developments, the opera also features humorous and playful moments, creating a vivid and richly varied whole.

The production team includes musical director Mihhail Gerts, director René Soom, lighting designer Rommi Ruttas, and répétiteurs and pianists Ene Rindesalu and Ave Wagner. The cast comprises vocal students of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and the orchestra.

The Harmonia Universitatis concert series was established in 2023 by the University of Tartu and the Estonian Academy of Music to offer South-Estonian audiences a diversity of musical experiences in the beautiful University of Tartu assembly hall.

The concert is free for all school and university students. The tickets are available through Piletikeskus. Please note that students also need to download their free tickets from Piletikeskus. Anyone claiming a discount must be prepared to present proof of eligibility.

The opera performance is supported by the Ministry of Culture’s research and development project “Eduard Tubin’s Drottningholm Heritage: Reconstructions of 17th–18th Century Stage Works and Their Connections to Original Compositions.”