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85 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
85 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
4 months ago
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* Libretto Father Giambattista Varesco after the play by Danchet
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* Music Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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<br>
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* New production Opéra national de Lorraine
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* OPERA NATIONAL DE LORRAINE ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS
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<br>
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* Conductor Jakob Lehmann
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* Stage director Lorenzo Ponte
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<br>
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* Set design Alice Benazzi
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* Costumes Giulia Rossena
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* Lighting Emanuele Agliati
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* Lighting assistant Alessandro Manni
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* Pictures by Simon Gosselin
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<br>
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* Chorus master Guillaume Fauchère
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* Assistant conductor William Le Sage
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<br>
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* Idomeneo Toby Spence
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damante Héloïse Mas
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* llia Siobhan Stagg
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* Electre Amanda Woodbury
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* Arbace Léo Vermot-Desroches
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* The High Priest* Wook Kang
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* The Voice of Neptune Louis Morvan
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* Cretan women® Inna Jeskova and Séverine Maquaire
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* Trojans* Yongwoo Jung and Jinhyuck Kim
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Distant chorus* Yongwoo Jung, Ill Ju Lee, Jinhyuck Kim and Christophe Sagnier
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* Meda Rosabel Huguet
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*Opera Chorus soloists
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Muths have different versions. After World war II, Christa Wolf began to rewrite myths from
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a perspective that questions the hegemony of the fathers. In 2023 the story of Idomeneo
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still need to be questioned: men and women are in the hands of the gods, the choices of a
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king are blamed on a monster, human sacrifice is acceptable and love is told as a tool
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capable to heal everything.
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We start from the conflict with which the opera ends: God apparently solves everything for
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everyone except for a single character. Electra cries out that joy and love have been stolen
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from her. What is the crime for which she pledges revenge? I believe there has to be
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something deeper than the love of Idamante. There is a hidden violence in this family. The
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sacrifice of the child is presented as an accident. Whereas this sacrifice, this violence are
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the very foundations of the city.
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The opera is totally missing references to the Queen of Crete, wife of Idomeneo and
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mother of damante. It is even difficult to trace its presence in other literary sources. Her
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name was Meda and she was killed for treason. What was the betrayal that cost her a
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damnatio memoriae? Meda was killed because she saw, because she knew on which
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crime Crete lays: the perpetual abuse of the child by the Father. Around Idomeneo and his
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family there is a culture that accepts and celebrates the sacrifice. In our staging we are in
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the 60's. The Great Priest and the sacrifice will be represented as parts of the Christian
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liturgy, the religion of the Father.
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The killing of the children has already taken place when Idomeneo abused of them.
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Religion hides the truth and keeps the horror away from men and women. The abuse is
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possible because there is a community who tolerates it. The chorus plays the families that
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live nearby Idomeneo. They want a peaceful life, which is threatened by the pain of these
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children, and therefore they need a rite which heals and restore peace.
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Electra is the one who reopens the wound. She is a 30/35 years woman of the 80's who
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will travel through memory to find responsibilities; she will see and show us again Queen
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Meda and therefore a possibility of a real new order based not on violence and sacrifice,
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but on the protection of the weak.
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The set tell this trip into memory through the means of analogical photography. The work
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on the memory becomes the work of developing a picture. The narrative passages will be
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marked by the photographic process. We will start from a family album from which the
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body of the mother is deleted and we will see the mother's face at the end of the opera.
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Christa Wolf wrote: "Little by little, when you begin to know, you begin to remember too.
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Knowing and remembering are the same thing". While the story of Varesco goes along, the
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staging puts the words and the actions of the characters under a different light. This story
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is told from the perspective of a woman who is thought to be insane. This is a story about
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the value of testimony, about memory and responsibility.
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September - October 2023
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