Operafest Lisboa 2023

Sour Angelica + Rigor Mortis (absolute premiere)

Puccini + Francisco Lima da Silva

Great Classics & Creations

 

26 and 27 AUG | 21h00

Garden of Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga

 

Sung in Italian and Portuguese

Subtitles in Portuguese and English

 

Suor Angelica is Puccini’s favorite opera from his "il trittico". An out-of marriage pregnancy condemns its protagonist to family expulsion and cloistered life, deprived from her own son. After seven years waiting, finally Angelica receives a visit from her aunt, intimating her to sign a proxy giving her full power over family goods. Cold cruel, after reminding her she is the family disgrace, she informs that her son had died. Suor Angelica sings a lullaby to her death son and decides to finish with her life using the same herbs, she used to heal her sisters. While dying, she begs the holy Virgin for forgiveness, since suicide is mortal sin.

 

Presented in an unusual double bill with the absolute premiere of "Rigor mortis or the house of Rings" by young talented composer Francisco Lima da Silva, with a libretto by A. Baião-Pinto based on "Mortuary house" by Domingos Monteiro. It approaches the grand thematic of human existence haunted by its finitude and the possibility of an existence beyond death, in a sarcastic full of humor story of a man who although after having committed suicide and being declared death,  continues in a sort of supra-earthly dimension, to be able to observe life around him. Watching his wife desperate regret and finally he is taken to the morgue, where he spends the night increasingly intrigued, until final revelation. A universal tragedy and a post mortem thriller evoking limits between life and death, both strongly highlighting women condition of guilt atonement and sacrifice. Soprano Catarina Molder will incarnate the protagonist, directed by David Pereira Bastos another debut in opera staging, conducted by promising Miguel Sepúlveda.

 

Musical Direction: Miguel Sepúlveda

Stage Director: David Pereira Bastos

Set design: Patrícia Costa

Costumes: Neusa Trovoada

Light design: Sérgio Moreira

 

Cast

Sister Angelica: Catarina Molder

Princess: Ana Ferro

The Abbess: Alexandra Calado

The Monitor: Leila Moreso

The Mistress of the Novices: Rita Coelho

Sister Genoveva: Célia Teixeira

The nursing sister: Rita Filipe

Orsina: Sónia Alves

Sister Dolcina: Laura Martins

Lay sister: Nadiia Lys

Novice: Ana Isabel Freitas

 

Artur: Ricardo Rebelo- Silva

Lúcia: Catarina Molder

Nurse : André Henriques

Doctor: Marios Maniatopoulos

Tarefeiro: Rita Filipe

 

Ensemble MPMP