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Karl-Heinz Macek

Selim

Soprano

Cornelia Götz

Constance

Julia Bauer

Blonde

Tenor

Bernhard Brechtold

Belmonte

Johannes Chum

Pedrillo

Bass

Mika Kares

Osmin

Conductor

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider

Stage director

Martin Kušej

Costume designer

Heide Kastler

Set designer

Annette Murschetz

Chorus master

Andrea Faidutti

I Teatri di Reggio Emilia

Teatro Comunale di Bologna

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Orchestra del Teatro Comunale Bologna

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Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Teatro Valli di Reggio Emilia

Die Entführung aus dem Serail -  (The Abduction from the Seraglio)

Reggio Emilia

Italy

Teatro Municipale Valli

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The Abduction from the Seraglio

Approved

WA Mozart's opera at the Municipal Theater arrives in Reggio on 10 and 12 February after its debut in Aix en Provence and Bologna. The stories of the protagonists can be read as a metaphor for the contrasts between West and East

On Friday 10 February 2017 at 8.00 pm and Sunday 12 February 2017 at 3.30 pm Il Ratto dal Serraglio by Mozart will be staged at the Municipal Theater Valli, which arrives from Bologna, where it made its debut at the Teatro Comunale last 20 January.

To better understand the work, Tuesday 7 February, at 6.30 pm, Ridotto del Valli, "Arrivaru li turchi, a la marina", meeting with Alberto Melloni, scholar of the history of Christianity and Domenico Quirico, head of foreign service journalist for the newspaper La Stampa , presentation by Gabriele Vacis. (Free admission subject to availability of places).

The "Singspiel" (that is, the German comic opera with spoken dialogues) by a twenty-five-year-old Mozart, is proposed - directed by Martin Kušej - in a desert, placing the contrasting vicissitudes between the two couples of lovers and their antagonists in an East close to us for historical time and setting; the stage is a desert, complete with sand dunes and Berber tents, on which the events unfold, also readable as a metaphor for the contrasts between West and East.

Here is how the story is re-contextualized: during the riots caused by the outbreak of the First World War, Konstanze, Belmonte's betrothed, was kidnapped together with the maid Blonde and the servant Pedrillo. They have fallen into the hands of Pasha Selim and Osmin - the head of his guards - who hope, with such hostages, to be able to exert pressure in their struggle for power.

The dialogues, rewritten by playwright Albert Ostermaier and also signed by the director himself Martin Kušej, transport the action to the English colonization of the 1920s, the years of Lawrence of Arabia, when the Western powers made the Middle East the territory of extraction of oil, wealth, power, colonization, under the pretext of fighting the Ottomans allied with the Germans, arousing deep resentment in the populations.

Rewriting of the text and direction, which therefore creates a parallelism with references to the self-proclaimed "Islamic state" and scenes with a strong visual and emotional impact that aroused heated contrasts on the occasion of the debut in Aix en Provence, co-producer of the work with the Municipal Bologna.

Massimo Mila says of this work, which belongs to the full maturity of Mozart's musical and dramaturgical genius: “(…) Mozart in those days had sent Archbishop Colloredo to the devil. He had disobeyed his father, or at least had bent him to his will for the first time, making him accept his marriage, albeit in extremis and without enthusiasm. The third stage came spontaneously on this insurrectional thrust: breaking the melodramatic habits to realize that ideal of theater that Mozart had longed for a long time confusedly. A theater that was not closed in the insurmountable terms of the serious opera and the comic opera, but took both to produce a faithful image of life, where the comic and the tragic are not separated, but mix inextricably in an iridescent plot. A new musical theater to allow a portrait of man, in the infinite accidental possibilities of him. "

On the podium, conducting the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, is Nikolaj Znaider, a Danish, successful violinist who subsequently passed successfully to conducting, making his debut in Italy in an opera direction. Austrian director Martin Kušej is Superintendent of the Munich Residenztheater and is recognized as one of the most important directors to have emerged on the international scene in recent years. The sets are by Annette Murschetz, the costumes by Heide Kastler and the lights by Reiner Traub.

English

The Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart, From (2017/2017), Directed by Martin Kušej,, Conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Teatro Municipale Valli, Reggio Emilia, Italy

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