SYNOPSIS - ACT ONE
ACT ONE opens with a barrage of colour in an imagined Italian palace populated by flamboyant aristocrats and their waggish attendants. It’s a larger than life, wigged-out world where the glamorous governess and winsome maid flap around the doddery Duchess and flirt with the wayward Count. The visual and musical cues recall the Baroque origins of opera, but here time is unfixed. This is a place where the antiquated meets the au courant and where a potpourri of otherwise anachronistic musical styles cheerfully coexist: Handel and Purcell blithely rub elbows with Rossini and Mozart as we hear LASCHIA CHI’IO PIANGA and DIDO’S LAMENT alongside arias from THE MAGIC FLUTE and THE BARBER OF SEVILLE. Just as this inflated balloon is about to pop, a mysterious figure appears to introduce the Neapolitan tenor’s O SOLE MIO and mark the beginning of a new era.
SYNOPSIS - ACT ONE
SYNOPSIS - ACT TWO
SYNOPSIS - ACT THREE
BAROQUE BEGINNERS
PAPAGENO, PAPAGENA
from THE MAGIC FLUTE (1791), Mozart
LASCIA CH’IO PIANGA
from RINALDO (1711), Handel
THE FLOWER DUET
from LAKME (1883), Delibes
AH! JE VEUX VIVRE
from ROMEO AND JULIET (1867),
Gounod
LARGO AL FACTOTUM
from THE BARBER OF SEVILLE (1816),
Rossini
DIDO’S LAMENT
from DIDO AND AENEAS (1689), Purcell
BARCAROLLE
from THE TALES OF HOFFMAN (1881), Offenbach
O SOLE MIO
Neapolitan song, 1898
