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