Gioachino Rossini: Mosè in Egitto

Rossini’s rarely performed masterpiece in a spectacular new production from the Bregenz Festival featuring Andrew Foster-Williams and Mandy Fredrich.

This year’s opera in the Festspielhaus from the Bregenz Festival centers on the Biblical Exodus. The universal story, with its themes of migration and inability to deal with power, has lost none of its urgency and topicality. By choosing an Old Testament subject, Rossini was able to get round the ban on staging operas during Lent. None the less, Mosè in Egitto contains all the ingredients of grand opera, mainly thanks to the concealed love story of the heir to the Egyptian throne. Today the moving prayer-aria of the Israelites in captivity remains the best known piece from the opera.

For the staging of this rarely performed work by Rossini, Dutch director Lotte de Beer, one of the most sought-after stage directors of her generation (International Opera Newcomer Award 2015) teams up with the Dutch theatre collective Hotel Modern. While the soloists and choir relate the tale of the pharaoh and the conflicts in his family, Hotel Modern will conjure up its own reality by using live animations to portray the mass scenes and the parallel narrative of the people and the slaves. Miniature cameras, thousands of puppets, models of villages and cities and a spectacular aquarium installation will present the biblical tale of plagues and the parting of the Red Sea on the Bregenz stage. On the rostrum of the Wiener Symphoniker will be Enrique Mazzola, conducting a cast featuring Andrew Foster-Williams, Mandy Fredrich, Sunnyboy Dladla, Clarissa Costanzo and Goran Juric.

Live Signal available!