Gulbenkian Music has teamed up with the Aix-en-Provence Festival to show, on a large screen, in its Grand Auditorium, four production premieres: Carmen by Bizet, The Rake’s Progress by Stravinsky, Così Fan Tutte by Mozart and Alcina by Händel. With free admission, this initiative seeks to take some of the best production at this prestigious, beyond borders Festival, opening up the music – and opera in particular – to a new public.

Synopsis

Ferrando and Gugliemo are engaged to two sisters, Dorabella and Fiordiligi. In order to prove an old saying that those loved are always faithful, they appear disguised as strangers, and in these false identities, they court the two ladies. However, their plan takes a turn and each one finds himself courting the bride of the other… Will the original couples be condemned to this game of love and cruelty? The cineaste and stage designer Christophe Honoré grasps this question in a new production that explores the relations of strengths among these characters governed by their desires, under the burning sun of the tuning-fork of the light-dark score of this Mozart that so closely resembles Marivaux. It is down to the Freiburger Barockorchester to evoke this sensual vertigo under the conducting of the leading Mozartian: Louis Langrée.

Opera in Italian with English subtitles.

Opera buffa in two acts

Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte

Premiered on 20 January 1790 at the Vienna Burgtheater

Musical direction Louis Langrée
Staging Christophe Honoré
Scenography Alban Ho Van
Wardrobe Thibault Vancraenenbroeck
Lighting design Dominique Bruguière
Fiordiligi Lenneke Ruiten
Dorabella Kate Lindsey
Despina Sandrine Piau
Ferrando Joel Prieto
Guglielmo Nahuel di Pierro
Don Alfonso Rod Gilfry
Choir Cape Town Opera Choir
Orchestra Freiburger Barockorchester

A new production for the Aix-en-Provence Festival

Co-production: Lille Opera, National Opera of Korea, International Festival of Edinburgh