L’Arlesiana

Francesco Cilèa (1866–1950)

Obsessed by a woman who is never seen, Federico ruins the lives of those he loves, as well as his own.

Love pervades this story of a young man, Federico, and his family and friends in the countryside near Arles in the south of France. But this is no rural idyll, this is real life. The passions and emotions of Federico, his mother Rosa, Vivetta, who has always loved him, and Metifio, his rival in love, have a powerful universal resonance. Cilèa’s 1897 opera depicts the superstitions surrounding a handicapped child, Federico’s obsessive love for a mysterious woman, his jealousy of Metifio, his mother’s all-consuming love for him, and the shy Vivetta, who loves Federico and suffers agonies of misery over him. At the centre of it all is l’Arlesiana, the woman from Arles. She never appears but – unwittingly, perhaps – pulls the strings as they all dance to her tune.
Written in the nineteenth century verismo tradition favoured by Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini, which depicted the rawness of the everyday lives of ‘ordinary’ people, this is reality opera for the twenty-first century. It includes Cilèa’s best-known aria È la solita storia del pastore, the famous ‘Federico’s Lament’.

Tickets €35 - €130

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Conductor
David Angus
Director
Rosetta Cucchi
Set Designer
Sarah Bacon
Costume Designer
Claudia Pernigotti
Lighting Designer
Simon Corder
Rosa Mamai
Annunziata Vestri
Frederico
Dimitry Golovnin
Vivetta
Mariangela Sicilia
Baldassarre
Christopher Robertson
Metifio
Quentin Hayes
Marco
Andrew Greenan
L’Innocente
Eleanor Jean Greenwood