Il Turco in Italia - Opéra de Dijon (2016) - Il Turco in Italia - Opéra de Dijon (2016)

Description

PRODUCTION Festival of Aix-en-Provence

COPRODUCTION Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera , Teatro Regio Torino, Turin, Dijon Opera

A wife, somewhat femme fatal and quite unfaithful, who firmly places the cuckold’s horns on her rich and aged husband’s head: a repudiated bohemian still in love with the Ottoman sultan; a Turkish prince come to Naples to study European customs and discover love in the Italian style; a few unrequited lovers; a poet with writer’s block who seeks to rekindle his inspiration by embarking this small universe into an imbroglio of irresistible vis comica: these are the ingredients of this whirlwind opera in the best Rossinian vein. In a hodgepodge tale that draws from Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes and even foreshadows Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, Rossini creates fireworks of exuberance and good humour. The poet in the story who pulls the strings and makes everyone dance is a stage doppelganger of the composer: Gioacchino lies in ambush, drawing benefit from the least situation to deploy virtuoso arias and ensembles in which the vocalise bursts like bubbles of champagne. In a production premiered in 2014 at the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, the equally virtuoso and brilliant staging of Christopher Alden drives this story of La Dolce Vita in Italy in the ’50s, when women— brunette or blonde, according to the mood or hour of the day — work their seductive wiles as they expertly course their way through the pleasures of life and love. Ever ephemeral, any notions of a serious nature are but a momentary pout that quickly gives way to new opportunities to taste happiness, and the deception of love is tossed off with a light heart and a teasing wink of an eyelash. A regular at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro and of the Italian repertoire, Antonello Allemandi leads a spirited top-tier cast that includes Damien Pass (Bluebeard and Masetto in 2012 and 2013 in Dijon) and the young and extraordinary Russian soprano Elena Galitskaya, winner of the Reine Elisabeth Competition in 2011.

More information is available on the opera house's official website.