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| | Arts Calendar / June 13 / Opera |
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Opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi. 205 min (with one interval) Libretto by François-Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle. Original Italian translation by Achille De Lauzières, revised by Angelo Zanardini. "Milan" version 1884. Conductors: Robert Treviño, Giacomo Sagripanti. Stage Director: Adrian Noble. Sung in Italian. Politics and religion are dangerously entwined in Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo. It is based on the 1787 dramatic poem by Friedrich Schiller and was first performed at the Paris Opéra in 1867. Verdi made extensive revisions to the opera over the following 20 years. This production by Nicholas Hytner follows the five-act 1886 version – Verdi’s final revision of the work. Don Carlo contains a host of vividly drawn characters, depicted through some of Verdi’s most complex music. The chilling Grand Inquisitor imposes his will in thunderous, dark-toned music, while the revolutionary Marquis of Posa sings a stirring duet with Don Carlos in praise of friendship and freedom. And in Eboli and Elizabeth, Verdi created two of his most sympathetic heroines.
Bolshoi Theater  |
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19:00 | Les Contes D'Hoffmann |
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 Opera by Jacques Offenbach. Libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carre based on the novels by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. 150 min (with intermission). Stage Director: Dmitry Bertman. Musical Director: Kirill Tikhonov. Conductor: Evgeny Brazhnik. Sung in French with Russian subtitles. When we speak about Offenbach we usually mean an opera buffa or an operetta. But this great French composer also created one great opera. The only opera by Jacques Offenbach "Les Contes D'Hoffmann" had an uneasy destiny. The author did not live to see the day when his latest work was presented to the public and had a huge success... Then a terrible fire broke out in Vienna and burnt the theatre down during the second run of the play. It gave the opera a bad name, but it has still been reviving like a phoenix: after World War II some materials written by Offenbach for the opera were found. This is the way the new fragments of the score are still appearing. The opera is not easy to perform but it got the artistes’ love. The whole opera was immediately taken to songs. The libretto of "Les Contes D'Hoffmann" is based on three short stories by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, who was a composer, lawyer, writer and poet. Fantastic visions and nightmares of a brilliant artist who suffers without love, blindly looking for sympathy where there is no place for it and who is not being able to notice the Muse, amuse and horrify the audience at the same time. People and dolls, love and mysticism.
Helikon Opera |
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