In 1897, over 100 years ago, Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucrezia Borgia was last premièred at the National Theater. Now audiences are eagerly anticipating the new staging by director Christof Loy with Edita Gruberova in the title role. The curtain will rise on this production for the first time on February 23.
Following Roberto Devereux, they are now continuing their successful collaboration, joining together to invent a characterization, the scenic interpretation of which marks a début for both of them.
With the role of Lucrezia Borgia they depict the character and the destiny of a woman seeking her own identity behind the myth that has been erected around her. As a poisoner, adulteress and murderess, however, she does everything she can to live up to this image of her created by men. Only in sleep and in dreams does another possibility appear: Lucrezia can give vent to her longing to be a loving mother; Gennaro, the child whose existence she had kept secret, can now be the son he never was before, with a mother he has never met. But this fleeting moment of happiness is destroyed by reality: Gennaro’s friends, whose families were traumatized by Lucrezia Borgia’s murders, confront him with the true identity of this unknown woman and plunge them both into a conflict that seems irresoluble, all of which drives the operatic action to a tragic climax.
Christof Loy, who was nominated as stage director of the year for the third time by Opernwelt magazine in 2008, and who most recently celebrated a complete success at the Bavarian State Opera with his production of Hans Werner Henze’s modern classic Die Bassariden will again put the virtuosity of his quiet analytical technique to work as he traces the perils and complications of the opera and its characters. His microscopic glance focuses on the individual human being, on the barely perceived emotional energies: hidden emotions, fears and yearnings become visible, surrounding the characters with an aura of psychological intensity.
Presiding on the podium will be one of the most sought-after conductors on the international operatic and concert horizon: Bertrand de Billy, Chief Conductor of the RSO Vienna. He will lead a first-class ensemble, including, besides Edita Gruberova, such eminent artists as Pavol Breslik as Gennaro, Franco Vassallo as Don Alfonso and Alice Coote as Maffio Orsini.
Première of Lucrezia Borgia
Mon. 2/23/2009, 7:00 P.M., National Theatre
Further performances
Sun, 2/28/2009, 7:30 P.M., Thu. 3/5, 7:00 P.M., Tue. 3/10, 7:00 P.M., Sun 3/15, 4:00 P.M.
10/02/2009
