LA MUETTE DE PORTICI
an opera by Daniel Auber
Staatstheater Kassel
PREMIERE May 2022
Staatstheater Kassel
PREMIERE May 2022
Conductor Kiril Stankow
Director Paul-Georg Dittrich
Stage Sebastian Hannak
Director Paul-Georg Dittrich
Stage Sebastian Hannak
Costume Anna Rudolph Light Marie-Luise Fieker
Dramaturgy Teresa Martin
Video Kai Wido Meyer
Video Kai Wido Meyer
Daniel Aubers' La muette de Portici caused such an uproar among the audience at the operahouse La Monnaie in Brussels 1830, that they rose up, stormed out of the theater and started a revolution. Music theatre as a culminating place of social discourse- hand in hand with the direction, the scenography reflects the meaning of social discourse in society throughout the centuries, starting in the turmoil of the 17th century Spanish occupation of Naples and ending today. From the second act on, we invite around 50 people with special tickets to the stage and experience the story from within the plot- being physically and acoustically part of the opera itself. At the very end of this richly orchestrated opera with huge choruses, mass scenes, opulence and glamour, we see the mute (!) main character Fenella glancing back at us- after this outright cinematic plot of an unfolding civil war, culminating in the opera's final image of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Auber's opera music became the soundtrack of the bourgeois emancipatory movement in the 1830s not only in Belgium, but throughout Europe - including Kassel, where the Citizen's Guard took to the streets to the sounds of the overture.
