Gluck’s Alceste was the opera that launched a revolution. Urgent, direct and pulsing with emotion, it stripped away baroque conventions to create a new kind of opera, and more than two centuries later, this tragedy of a woman prepared to give her life for love still strikes straight to the heart. Anne Sofie von Otter is formidable in the title role of this powerful production, created by director Robert Wilson in 2000 for the Theatre du Châtelet in Paris. Paul Groves and Ludovic Tézier also star, with John Eliot Gardiner conducting the period instrument forcers of the English Baroque Soloists.
Orphée et Eurydice
The power of music, the pain of loss, and the price we pay for love: the characters in Orphée et Eurydice might be ancient, but the themes of the drama are eternal – and in his most celebrated opera, Gluck express them with a directness and an inspiration that feels as fresh today as it did in the composer’s own era. In Paris, in 2000, director Robert Wilson and conductor John Eliot Gardiner revived Berlioz’s adaptation of this groundbreaking score, coupling a pared-back minimalist setting with all the colours of the period-instrument Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Magdalena Kožená brings all her youthful brilliance to the role of Orpheus.
Arvo Pärt – Adam’s Passion
Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between two “masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In the spectacular setting of a former submarine factory, American director and universal artist Robert Wilson creates a poetic visual world in which the mystical musical language of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt can cast its meditative spell. Three of Pärt’s major works – Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa, and Miserere, as well as Sequentia, a new work composed especially for this production – are brought together here using light, space, and movement to create a tightly-woven Gesamtkunstwerk in which the artistic visions of these two great artists mirror each other.