Who? What? Libretto lecture? Once in a while, we take out an opera classic and, out of sheer curiosity and pleasure, fillet the music of the text so that its content can resonate in a new way for us and our times.
Read the review By Evelyne Coussens in Etcetera on libretto reading #12: Silla Revisited.
The Mute of Portici, libretto reading #14
Aber's opera unravelled, for opera lovers and opera dummies
Story in brief
Naples, 1638
The Neapolitan people suffer under the tyranny of the Spanish viceroy.
When the fisherman Masaniello learns how his sister Fenella was first seduced and then coldly dumped by ne Spaniard, the measure is full. Time to throw off the Spanish yoke for good.
But what if love turns out to be stronger than jealousy and revenge?
What if the heart wins out over rational principles?
What if a justifiable social struggle degenerates into blind and all-consuming fanaticism?
Weather
When the duet 'Amour sacré de la patrie' came to the ears of the public at the Monnaie Theatre on 25 August 1830, they spontaneously unleashed the revolt against King William I that same evening that would go down in history as the Belgian Revolution.
Dive in our libretto readings archive.
