Leading Dutch baroque ensemble Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, led by musical director Jan Willem de Vriend, are featuring in the baroque festival with a double bill.

The first performance will be Georg Philipp Telemann’s opera Pimpinone at the Throne Room of the President’s Palace this evening.

Pimpinone is a comic intermezzo which remains Telemann’s best-known stage work. It was the fashion in baroque times to have a brief intermezzo between acts of a longer and more serious work. Telemann had written an adaptation of Handel’s opera seria Tamerlano. He provided Pimpinone as comic relief between acts and it was first performed at Hamburg’s Theater am Gänsemarkt in September 1725.

This intermezzo is to a libretto by Johann Philipp Praetorius and features two characters: Pimpinone (bass Marcel Boone) and Vespetta (soprano Renate Arends).

Vespetta, as waspish as her name implies, is a scheming, pretty, young chambermaid whose main ambition is to cajole her employer, the much older Pimpinone, to marry her. It is certainly not a match made in heaven but one dictated by Vespetta’s greed in wanting to dominate a rich old man and his financial resources.

Once married she shows the cloven hoof and completely dominates her hapless husband. This situation rings a bell with those familiar with a similar comic intermezzo by Pergolesi, the famous La serva padrona (1732) to which Pimpinone points the way.

The ensemble will tomorrow take on the Jesuit Church with an unmissable programme of Bach cantatas, again conducted by de Vriend.

• The performances are being held at 7.30pm on both days. Tickets may be obtained by phone on 2124 6389 or by e-mail: bookings@teatrumanoel.com.mt.