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Libretto:
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Orchestration:
Joseph Stillwell & Stefan Cwik, overseen by David Conte, protege of N. Boulanger
Conductor:
Neal Goren
Stage director:
Robin Guarino
Set designer:
Andromache Chalfant
Costume designer:
Candice Donelly
Lighting & Projections:
Jessica Ann Drayton
Cast
Hébé - Melissa Harvey, soprano
Anne - Laurie Rubin, mezzo-soprano
Léonard - Joshua Dennis, tenor
Alexandre - Jorell Williams, baritone
With the participation of an 11-member instrumental ensemble
Ticket prices: €15, €20
Students, children: €10
Opera • Greek premiere
Greek National Opera Alternative Stage
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center
Starts at: 20.30 (Sunday 19.30) |
In co-production with Catapult Opera
Alternative Stage sponsor: PPC (Public Power Company)
La ville morte (The Dead City), the only opera composed by Nadia Boulanger –one of the most important music educators and conductors of the 20th century– in collaboration with her mentor Raoul Pugno, will receive its Greek premiere – and be presented for just the third time in over a century – by the GNO Alternative Stage, in co-production with the daring American company Catapult Opera.
La ville morte, based on the famous Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio’s play of the same title, and adapted by the poet himself into an operatic libretto, tells the tragic and outrageous story of a decadent incestuous passion set against the backdrop of the excavation of the ruins of the ancient city of Mycenae. The work’s music moves in line with the wider aesthetics of musical impressionism, interspersed with echoes from the influential expressive palette of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
Although it had been scheduled to premiere at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 1914, Boulanger and Pugno’s La ville morte – hailed as the most important creative achievement of the great French conductor, music educator and mentor to some of the greatest music figures of the 20th century (such as Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and Astor Piazzolla) – was never staged in its time because of the outbreak of the First World War. The opera was first performed only in 2005, at the Festival of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and in a new orchestration based on the only act spared by a storage room fire; it was then performed for a second time, in concert, at the Göteborg Opera, Sweden, in March 2020.
The production is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.
LA VILLE MORTE ©Sophie von Hellermann 2023
STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION
CULTURAL CENTER
364 Syggrou Avenue, Kallithea
Box Office:
+30 213 0885700
Box Office email:
boxoffice@nationalopera.gr
Daily 09.00-21.00
info@nationalopera.gr