Opera Highlights: Donizetti's L'assedio di Calais (The Siege of Calais)

Gaetano Donizetti’s opera L’assedio di Calais (The Siege of Calais) focuses on tales of courage and self-sacrifice arising from the bleak conditions of Edward the III's year-long siege of Calais during the Hundred Years’ War. This rarely-heard Italian bel canto work was well received at the time of its premier, but an ill-timed cholera outbreak saw it close prematurely. It would be 150 years before the work was rediscovered. Recent revivals have shown it to be an opera of great beauty and poetry with truly remarkable music. Salvatore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto, which has been described as "...a remarkable libretto, the closest Cammarano ever got to real poetry, particularly in his description of the embattled city and the heartfelt pride of its citizens."

“This tale of courage, self-sacrifice, and wartime could be set in the present day,” explains Gil Rose, Odyssey Opera’s Artistic and General Director. “Besieged cities are found throughout history, from Calais during the Hundred Years’ War, through Stalingrad during World War Two, to Aleppo in Syria”

. . .
James Westman // Eustachio de Saint-Pierre, Mayor of Calais
Magda Gartner // Aurelio, his son
Lucia Cesaroni // Eleanora
Neal Ferreira // Giovanni d’Aire, burgher
Alan Schneider // Giacomo de Wisants, burgher
James Demler // Pietro de Wisants, burgher
Christopher Carbin // Armando, burgher
John Allen Nelson, Baritone // Eduardo III, King of England
Sumner Thompson // Edmundo, English General
. . .
Gil Rose // Conductor
Joshua Major // Stage Director
. . .
Music by Gaetano Donizetti
Libretto by Salvatore Cammarano based on Luigi Marchionni’s play L’assedio di Calais
Sung in Italian with English titles

Video by Kathy Wittman, Ball Square Films

[yvelinec]

DE CET OPERA est né LE CALAISIEN
UN MOKA CALAISIÊN . BD JACQUÂRD .
à moins que ce ne SOÎT Pharisiens ?
à PARIS ?