Cavalleria Rusticana / Luci Mie Traditrici

by Pietro Mascagni / Salvatore Sciarrino
Opera in one act
Libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozetti and
Guido Menasci based on a novella by Giovanni Verga

Opera in two acts
Libretto by Salvatore Sciarrino based on the drama
Il tradimento per l’onore (1664), attributed to Giacinto Andrea Cicognini

in Italian
A vague notion is often enough to plant the beginnings of doubt into one’s heart. Doubt easily develops a destructive life of its own. Two operas, and with it two diametrically opposed musical idioms, tell a story of obsessive jealousy: In Cavalleria rusticana, it is Santuzza‘s fear of Turridu leaving her for Lola, which in no time at all leads to an act of violence. And in Sciarrino’s Luci mie traditrici, composed about a hundred years later, the fear of being deceived by the beloved leads to a double murder. Simultaneously, all characters doubt their own senses’ certainty. The security of one’s own emotions gradually disintegrates. Whilst Mascagni‘s characters feverishly and loudly sing about their inner needs, the need of Sciarrino’s characters to talk about love falls apart. Suffocated words, whispers, breaths and heart beats show that and what follows is a raging stillness of inner solitude.
Location
Opernhaus
This production's premiere
October 11, 2020
Recommended age
from grade 10