2000 · La Didone · Cavalli · Rousset · Vigner (EN)
On 31 December 2000, Vigner staged his first opera for the Opéra de Lausanne, CAVALLI’s LA DIDONE with JUANITA LASCARRO, TOPI LEHTIPUU, IVAN LUDLOW, KATALIN VARKONYI, ANNE-LISE SOLLIED, HÉLÈNE LE CORRE, MONIQUE SIMON, JAËL AZZARETTI, JOHN BOWEN, DANIEL SALAS, GUDJON OSKARSSON, CHRISTOPHE GILLET and the chorus of the Opéra de Lausanne is the beginning of a close cooperation with the young conductor CHRISTOPHE ROUSSET, one of the leading Baroque musicians, and his ensemble LES TALENS LYRIQUES.
Christophe Rousset had been studying Cavalli for a long time. He had already conducted LA DIDONE in the course of a masterclass. The work constitutes an unfulfilled dream, which he got a chance to fulfil through close cooperation with a man of the theatre. For Eric Vigner this first approach to opera means venturing onto completely new ground. With a 25-head choir, 14 soloists, 18 instrumentalists and four actors, Vigner has everything he needs to embed his imagination in a musical universe.
Aeneas, the Trojan hero and son of Venus, flees Troy, laid in ruins by the Greeks. Landing on the shores of Carthage, he falls in love with the Queen, Dido, but leaves her soon in order to fulfil his destiny imposed by the gods. Dido consoles herself by marrying the king of Libya, Jarbas.
"To give life to this sensual fable, the Rousset-Vigner team recruits a young cast. The assignment of parts is the key to the story: one singer sings both Creusa and Dido, so Aeneas falls in love with one and the same woman. At the same time, Aeneas and Jarbas are almost twins - so Dido loves one man, and marries him in the end. The couples merge in one and their identities become blurred. Is Aeneas’s African episode perhaps no more than an exotic dream, the dream of an amour fou, in the middle of an unrelenting fate dictated by the Heavens? Doesn’t Dido merely dream that she succumbs to the advances of a wandering warrior before she resigns herself to marrying her original suitor? And isn’t the spectator, too, drawn into a troubled dream in a mythological country where gods tear each other to pieces and humans make love in the shade of a rhinoceros ?"
MATTHIEU CHENAL, 24 Heures, 4 Janvier 2001
© Photography : Alain Fonteray
Texts assembled by Jutta Johanna Weiss
Translation from the French by Herbert Kaiser
© CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient
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