Everything Rewinds presents contemporary adaptations of arias by George Frideric Handel through new texts, electronic production, and AI-assisted performance. In Baroque opera, the aria often served as a moment of suspension, isolating and extending a single emotional state. These adaptations retain that focus, translating each aria’s underlying emotional condition into a contemporary musical context.
The selection spans a range of moods—stillness, expectation, care, rupture, and disorientation—organized not as narrative but as a progression of states. At the same time, the album explores variation in style, texture, and instrumentation, reflecting the diversity of Handel’s works while situating them within a contemporary listening framework. Rather than arrangements or covers, these tracks are best understood as continuations: new works shaped by older ones.
Ombra mai fu
from Serse (1738)
Music: George Frideric Handel
Libretto: Nicola Francesco Haym, after Silvio Stampiglia
At the beginning of the opera, Xerxes admires the shade of a plane tree. What appears at first to be a conventional pastoral image becomes an expression of stillness, gratitude, and quiet contemplation. The aria suspends dramatic action in favor of a single sustained emotional condition.
This adaptation preserves the aria's atmosphere of stillness while shifting its focus inward. The tree becomes a more abstract presence: a memory, a trace, or a lingering absence. The music's sense of suspension remains, but the object of contemplation becomes less tangible and more psychological.
Lyrics by Rodolphe El-Khoury
[Insert final lyrics here]
Text by Nicola Francesco Haym (after Silvio Stampiglia)
[Insert Italian text here]
The Handel Project version
Original Handel aria
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