Stiffelio by Verdi, Da (2022/2022), Diretto da Bruno Ravella, Direttore d'orchestra Débora Waldman, Opéra de Dijon, Digione, Francia

A spiritual guide confronted with the adultery of his wife: souls and bodies in struggle meet in this little-known masterpiece by Verdi that Debora Waldman's complicity with the Dijon Bourgogne Orchestra will bring back to life. Towards the end of the 1840s, Verdi had just passed his thirties by signing two masterpieces in quick succession, Macbeth (1847) and Luisa Miller (1849). Their success gave him a certain creative freedom. What new subject will he focus on? Few opera lovers know the answer, and for good reason: Stiffelioended up being withdrawn from the bill by the composer himself, despite the beauties of a score to which he was very attached. Its plot, developed by Piave from a contemporary play, is reminiscent of a drama of the Scandinavian school. Pastor Stiffelio, joining his flock with his wife Lina, discovers that she has cheated on him. The fight in his soul between the thirst for revenge and the desire to forgive inspired Verdi some of his most beautiful pages. But the scandal of such adultery, and the evocation on stage of a divorce, provoked the wrath of the censorship. It was not until 1992 that the discovery of autograph fragments in the Verdian archives finally made it possible to reconstruct the original score.