2003 · L'Empio Punito · Melani · Rousset · Vigner (EN)

In May 2003, VIGNER signed for his second opera. Invited to the Leipzig Bach Festival, he staged L'EMPIO PUNITO by ALESSANDRO MELANI in collaboration with the conductor CHRISTOPHE ROUSSET, his musicians LES TALENS LYRIQUES, and the singers MARGUERITE KRULL, MARIKA SCHÖNBERG, KRISTINA HANSSON, KATHRIN GÖRING, PAUL KONG, RICKARD SÖDERBERG, TUOMAS PURSIO, MARTIN PETZOLD.

L'EMPIO PUNITO (The punished godless) was composed 1669 for the carnival in Rome, a century before MOZARTs DON GIOVANNI. MELANI and the librettist ACCIAIUOLI treat the Don Juan's material for the first time in the opera. They use metaphors and poetic pictures to express what cannot easily be said at the time. There are neither specific places and spaces, nor exactly comprehensible time courses. 

“This opera can only play in the Orient. I think of the Serails, for example. The whole atmosphere and the seclusion of Atraces’ Empire speak for an Eastern world. In the 17th and the 18th century, there was a big fascination in Europe for the Orient, especially in Italy. The proximity to the Ottoman Empire and the cultural difference excited the imagination of European courts, for eroticism and sensuality as well as for a certain form of cruelty, the unspoken, the hidden and the shadowy picture of the Orient. The theater of the 17th and 18th century, MOLIÈRE…, is sensible to the imagery of the Orient, as well as the librettists and composers of that time.”
ÉRIC VIGNER

“The space is a primary matter, comparable with gold, which has not been treated yet. It is a hard, a compact matter with lots of force in it. This world has its own laws, usually nothing can penetrate from the outside - a kind of golden cage. The first act still lies in the shade. The gold is not activated yet. In the course of the piece light comes into this world by Acrimante. He himself is dressed in black, but he brings light into this world. He literally lights it up, so that it shines from inside out. In the transferred sense: all characters learn something about themselves.”
ÉV

 

© Photography : Alain Fonteray
Texts assembled by Jutta Johanna Weiss
Translation from the French by Herbert Kaiser
© CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient