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Westminster Opera Theatre will present G.F. Handel’s earliest oratorio, Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (The triumph of time and disillusionment), on Friday, December 4 and Saturday, December 5 in the Yvonne Theater on С����Ƶ’s campus in Lawrenceville, N.J. This fully staged production will be sung in Italian with English supertitles and performed with orchestra. 

Georg Friedrich Handel composed Il trionfo del tempo… during a Papal ban on opera. The plot focuses on the character Beauty. She is tempted into a life of hedonism by Pleasure, but is reasoned with by Time and Enlightenment to follow a modest, better-balanced path. “The drama and the tension … seep through every crack of this work,” says music director, William Hobbs, “and it's no surprise that this work is increasingly finding a home on the operatic stage.”

The young Handel, inspired by his new home in Rome, composed some of his most Italianate melodies for it. The opera’s stage director David Paul adds, “Combined with some of the most stunningly beautiful and idiosyncratic music we’ve ever encountered, this piece packs a punch we hope you’ll be surprised to experience.” It contains the aria "Lascia la spina,” later recast as "Lascia ch'io pianga" in his 1711 opera Rinaldo.

Westminster Opera Theatre has been praised for its innovative productions of a wide range of operas.  Participants in the program have gone on to perform in opera houses around the world.  Recent seasons have included La Clemenza di Tito, The Dialogues of the Carmelites, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Così fan tutte, Der Schauspieldirektor, Gianni Schicchi, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Il mondo della luna and I Capuleti e i Montecchi.

Westminster Choir College faculty member Williams Hobbs works at many of the world’s major opera houses as conductor and coach. These include the Opéra National de Paris, the Salzburg Festival, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Seattle Opera, Washington Opera and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. He has assisted conductors Claudio Abbado, Sir Charles Mackerras, Jiří Bělohlávek, Jiří Kout, Marco Armiliato and many others, and worked closely with singers such as Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Frederica von Stade, Sonia Ganassi, Placido Domingo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Sam Ramey and Kurt Moll. Mr. Hobbs has devoted a large portion of his career to working with young singers. He was on the faculty of the Aspen Opera Theater Center of the Aspen Music Festival for six years, and he has been on the faculty of the CoOPERAtive Program at Westminster Choir College since 2008. He was on the coaching staff of the Juilliard School of Music for many years and was invited by the National Theater of Tokyo to serve as visiting master coach.

David Paul has worked as a director for opera, theater, and film throughout the United States and abroad. The New York Times hailed his recent production of Gluck's Iphigenie en Aulide, as "a gift to opera lovers,” while the Washington Post lauded his "sure sense of theater." Paul's wide range of work as a stage director and filmmaker has been praised by critics and audiences for its theatrical ingenuity, attention to musical and dramatic detail, and the powerful, nuanced performances he draws from his performers.

The winter of 2015 marks the release of POETLOVE, a film conceived and directed by Paul. A cinematic adaptation of Schumann's Dichterliebe, using the original music but set in modern-day New York and performed entirely in English, POETLOVE endeavors to bridge the gap between 19th-century classical song and 21st-century audiences.  This winter he will travel to Tokyo for another set of public coachings and master classes under the auspices of the Juilliard-IFAC competition, whose final round he will also judge.  He will also serve as artist-in-residence at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisc. He will also return to Westminster to direct semi-staged performances of Hansel and Gretel with the CoOPERAtive Program. Continuing his affiliation with the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Program, Paul will serve as dramatic coach and consultant for the Met+Juilliard production of La Sonnambula. He will also make his debut at Opera Saratoga, where he will directs a new production of Le nozze di Figaro.

Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for students and seniors.  They can be purchased at the door, through the box office at 609-896-7775 or online at .