We’re off to the Opera de Paris for “Medee” by Marc-Antoine Charpentier on this week’s Sunday Opera (8/11 3:00 p.m.). With a libretto by Thomas Corneille, the opera shows the tragic results of Medea’s anger as she seeks revenge for Jason’s infidelity.
The opera begins with a prologue that doesn’t have anything to do with Medea, and it just seems to be Charpentier buttering up King Louis XIV with a short segment extoling his wonderful virtues. After that, the opera gets down to the well-known story of Jason and Medea, however, this time it begins just as she’s realizing that Jason is not going to marry her and is actually pursuing King Creon’s daughter Creuse.
Madea’s revenge still includes her gift of a mantle for Creuse that bursts into flames and kills her and the murder of Medea’s two children she had with Jason, but in this version, her wrath includes her destroying the Palace of Corinth as she is flown through the sky in her fiery chariot drawn by dragons or serpents.
The cast features Lea Desandre in the title role and Reinoud Van Mechelen as Jason. King Creon is Laurent Naouri and his daughter Creuse is Ana Vieira Leite. The rest of the cast includes Gordon Bintner, Emmanuelle de Negri, Elodie Fonnard, Lisandro Abadie, and Julie Rosset is featured as Amour. Of course, they’re joined by Les Arts Florissants and the Opera de Paris conducted by Willaim Christie.
We’ll round out our time together with a bit of a homage to Jason with THE SEA ballet suite of Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Byron Fidetzis.
