Organization

Conductor

Michele Spotti

Stage director

Emilio Sagi

Set designer

Daniel Bianco

Costume designer

Pepa Ojanguren

Lighting designer

Eduardo Bravo

Singer

Bass

Luis Cansino

Selim

Soprano

Salome Jicia

Donna Fiorilla

Giulio Mastrototaro

Don Geronio

Tenor

Francisco Brito

Don Narciso

Baritone

Mikhail Timoshenko

Prosdocimo

Mezzo-soprano

Marion Jacquemet

Zaida

Opéra de Lausanne

Chorus master

Antonio Greco

Others

Chœur de l'Opéra de Lausanne

Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne

Pablo Plaza

Albazar

Il turco in Italia -  (The Turk in Italy)

Lausanne

Switzerland

Public

The Turk in Italy

Approved

Oriental dance at the foot of the volcano
Like his contemporaries, Gioacchino Rossini seemed to enjoy exoticism and travel, since after ‘taking’ an Italian girl to Algiers in 1813 at the request of Venice, he ‘invited’ a Turk to Italy in an opera buffa composed the following year for the Teatro alla Scala! But unlike his first Venetian successes (apart from L’italiana in Algeri: Il signor Bruschino, La scala di seta and above all Tancredi), it garnered scant applause. It was not until almost a century later that Italy took an interest in the work again, after the last performances in 1855: during a memorable reunion 1950 reuninon in Rome, marked by the presence of a certain… Maria Callas as Fiorilla. No matter! The work, which like Mozart’s Cosìfan tutte (performed shortly before the premiere on the same Milanese stage) “dances on a volcano” – both literally and figuratively, as librettist Felice Romani set the story near Naples, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius – is now appreciated at its true value: as one of the nuggets of the “new” buffa style, paving the way for masterpieces such as Il barbiere di Siviglia; just as Tancredi, freed from the lengthy recitatives of the seria tradition, heralded Cenerentola and Semiramide.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble