Dear Deidamia

Before Deidamia takes to the stage at the 2026 Handel Festival, the scenic reading by the Junges Theater at Café Liesels in the Forum Wissen offers an engaging preview of the plot and characters of Handel’s final opera — a perfect warm-up for the Festival Opera.

The “melodrama” tells the story of the king’s daughter Deidamia and her love for the hero Achilles, who, disguised in women’s clothing, hides on a Greek island to avoid being sent to the Trojan War. Yet without him, the war cannot be won. In Paolo Rolli’s libretto, the interplay of gender roles, the friendships between women and men, and their fears of separation and death are held in delicate balance — united by the ever-present force of love.