Lear at Opéra National De Paris - Palais Garnier
Dates: (5/20/2016 - 6/12/2016 )
Opéra National De Paris - Palais Garnier |
Place de l’Opéra
Paris,Île-de-France 75009
Phone: +33 (0)1 71 25 24 23
Running Time: 3h00 with 1 interval
SUBMIT UPDATES
"Where am I? Is it day? I don’t know what to say. Are these hands mine? How I long to know who I am!"
- Lear, Partie II, scène 6
Berlioz wrote nothing more than an overture to Shakespeare’s King Lear. Debussy went no further than the first two numbers of the incidental music he had agreed to write for André Antoine’s production of the play. Verdi, who procrastinated endlessly over this “vast and tortuous” tragedy that had haunted him since 1843, confessed towards the end of his life that the scene where Lear finds himself on the moor had terrified him. Hoping to do justice to the role “less out of theatrical ambition” than because he had long “believed that the various levels of the inner and outer drama could be adapted and effectively expressed in music”, the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau appealed to Benjamin Britten before turning to the German composer, Aribert Reimann.
At first hesitant, the latter finally set to work. After repeatedly reading the play, the work eventually took root and he stored away the music in “a sort of drawer somewhere in [his] head”.
A commission from the Munich Staatsoper in 1975 triggered the actual composition. “Rarely has anyone depicted so convincingly – except perhaps Alban Berg in Wozzeck – the fact that a man's solitude is due to his own incapacity to see those around him”, wrote the first performer of this major 20th century opera composed at his initiative. This new production by Calixto Bieito marks the first revival of the work at the Paris Opera since its French premiere in 1982.
Cast and Creative team for Lear at Opéra National De Paris - Palais Garnier
Music
Aribert Reimann
Libretto
Claus H. Henneberg
After William Shakespeare, King Lear
In German
Conductor
Fabio Luisi
Director
Calixto Bieito
König Lear
Bo Skovhus
König von Frankreich
Gidon Saks
Herzog von Albany
Andreas Scheibner
Herzog von Cornwall
Michael Colvin
Graf von Kent
Kor-Jan Dusseljee
Graf von Gloster
Lauri Vasar
Edgar
Andrew Watts
Edmund
Andreas Conrad
Goneril
Ricarda Merbeth
Regan
Erika Sunnegardh
Cordelia
Annette Dasch
Narr
Kathrin Wehlisch
Bedienter
Nicolas Marie
Ritter
Lucas Prisor
Set design
Rebecca Ringst
Costume design
Ingo Krügler
Video
Sarah Derendinger
Lighting design
Franck Evin
Dramaturgy
Bettina Auer
Chorus master
Alessandro Di Stefano
Videos
Recommended For You
Get France's #1 Newsletter
Get the best news & discounts for France & beyond.
