Le lacrime di Eros

Eros weeps, and in the sparkling tears appear the dark aspects of love. Conductor Raphaël Pichon – together with his Pygmalion ensemble and choir – and theatremaker Romeo Castellucci go back to opera’s roots for their brandnew production Le lacrime di Eros. Inspired by the creativity and unconstrained experimentation of Florence in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, they explore a topic that has been at the heart of opera since its very beginnings: love. In Renaissance Florence, composers, philosophers, poets, choreographers, painters and inventors joined forces to create a new art form: opera. The rich repertoire of composers such as Striggio, Malvezzi, Marenzio, Peri, Caccini, Cavalieri and, somewhat later, a young Claudio Monteverdi bears musical witness to the birth of the new genre. In their music, love is far from being something sweetly sentimental; it is inextricably linked with a dark shadow. Operating masterfully at the interface of opera with performance art and the visual arts, Romeo Castellucci will present the many faces of love in a production that has all the ingredients for a striking and hauntingly beautiful experience. Raphaël Pichon and his Pygmalion ensemble enact a dialogue between original material from the Renaissance and the electronic music of Scott Gibbons. In his new compositions, Gibbons amplifies and distorts the sounds of the performers’ bodies to explore human passion in all its tenderness and cruelty. Le lacrime di Eros also uses the latest technology in artificial acoustics and sound mapping to create a sound space that is an artwork in its own right. In this advanced soundscape, audiences will not only hear the Pygmalion choir but also an ensemble of impressive voices and stage personalities. Soprano Jeanine De Bique previously sang the roles of Annio in La clemenza di Tito (2018) and Aida in Caruso a Cuba (2018) with DNO, while mezzo-soprano Katia Ledoux performed the roles of Geneviève in Pelléas et Mélisande (2019), Makuba in How Anansi Freed the Stories of the World (2021) and Proserpine in Eurydice – Die Liebenden, blind (2022). Baritone Gyula Orendt returns to Amsterdam after his performance of Gaveston/Stranger in George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence (2018), while tenor Zachary Wilder will be making his house debut.