Organization

Admin

Wexford Festival Opera

Singer

Soprano

Ami Hewitt

Elvira

Mezzo-soprano

Sarah Luttrell

Zulma

Bass

Peter Lidbetter

Haly

Stage director

Conor Hanratty

Lighting designer

Daniele Naldi

Deirdre Arratoon

Isabella

Baritone

Eoin Foran

Taddeo

William Kyle

Giorgi Manoshvili

Mustafa

Hannah O’Brien

Leah Redmond

Costume designer

Frances White

Marta Pluda

Anna-Helena Maclachlan

Set designer

Orchestra

Orchestra of Wexford Festival Opera

Conductor

Gioele Muglialdo

Tenor

Victor Jiménez Moral

Lindoro

Italian

L'italiana in Algeri -  (The Italian Girl in Algiers)

Wexford

Ireland

O’Reilly Theatre

L'italiana in Algeri Rossini

Public

Private

The Italian Girl in Algiers

English

Approved

As the first writer to recognize the genius of Rossini, Stendhal was also the first to leave a famous account of L’italiana in Algeri. He rightly saw it as an opera that even without star performers can produce a sweeping excitement … a kind of musical frenzy that takes hold of orchestra and audience alike, whirling one and all away on waves of uncontrollable delight.’ It was Italiana that in 1813 established the young Rossini as a master of comic opera, just as only two months earlier Tancredi had confirmed him as a master of serious opera, or opera seria. In the 20th century, it was also Italiana that helped to re-establish Rossini’s reputation, which on the international scene had at one point dwindled to the occasional Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

Rossini had already completed ten operas when, at the age of 21, he composed Italiana in ten days. Although Rossini always wrote with prolific ease, here he was under pressure to fill a gap in the schedule of the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice, and so adapted the libretto of an existing opera (Luigi Mosca’s work of the same name). There was nothing unusual about a composer doing that, but Rossini established an unprecedented chemistry with the words. The result, which quickly overshadowed the earlier opera, was an instant success. It remains one of Rossini’s most popular works, still admired now if less for the absurd plot than for the brilliant, witty music.

If Rossini was transforming the previously mundane into the magnificently manic, he was doing so by taking Mozart as his guide. The Austrian composer was one who inspired Rossini to new possibilities, of which no other Italian composer of his generation could conceive. But despite Italiana’s spectacular success, the coming few years would not be easy for the composer, caught up as he was in the politics that follow the collapse of Napoleon’s power in Italy. Rossini’s fondness for mockery would have to wait again to find full expression — and to produce more ‘uncontrollable delight’.

The Italian Girl in Algiers by Rossini, From (2023/2023), Directed by Conor Hanratty,, Conductor Gioele Muglialdo, O’Reilly Theatre, Wexford, Ireland

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

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Ensemble

Program, About & Synopsis

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Further reading

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Venues