The Magic Flute
Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset

Opera

Saturday, 29 August 2020
7.30 pm, Gstaad Festival Tent

Constance tells us that during the final days of his life, in the autumn of 1791, Mozart followed from his bed, watch in hand, each performance of his Magic Flute by the Theater auf der Wieden of his friend (and Masonic lodge brother) Emanuel Schikaneder, humming its emblematic tunes... Could he offer more beautiful proof of his attachment to this now legendary score, in which he returned, after the very aristocratic (and Italian) “Da Ponte trilogy”, to the genre of popular theatre that suits him so well, ideally combining childish enchantment (embodied by the characters of Papageno and Papagena) and spiritual initiation (through the quest of Tamino and Pamina)? The work is brought to the stage by one of the finest specialists in baroque and classical rereading on historical instruments, Christophe Rousset, at the helm of his Talens Lyriques and the Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne, with Sandrine Piau, whom we can imagine starring brilliantly in the role of Pamina.