Simon Boccanegra - Opera - Season 18/19 Programming - Opéra national de Paris

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    Opera

    Simon Boccanegra

    Giuseppe Verdi

    Opéra Bastille - from 15 November to 13 December 2018

    Agathe Poupeney / OnP

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Simon Boccanegra

Opéra Bastille - from 15 November to 13 December 2018

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Opera

Simon Boccanegra

Giuseppe Verdi

Book

Opéra Bastille - from 15 November to 13 December 2018

2h50 with 1 interval

Language : Italian

Surtitle : French / English

  • Opening night : 15 November 2018

    Pre-opening : 12 November 2018

About

In few words:

The ambiguities of Verdi’s theatre are particularly clear in his baritone roles, among which is that of Boccanegra, corsair turned doge of Genoa and the troubled observer of the conflicts that tore apart 14th century landowners and peasants. An eminently political opera in which power struggles are interwoven with family conflicts, Simon Boccanegra echoes the life of its composer – the man who championed the cause of Italian unification and overcame the loss of his wife and children. Calixto Bieito, that most Shakespearean of opera directors, brings humanism and truth to a work haunted by gleaming images of the sea.

  • Opening
  • First Part 80 mn
  • Interval 30 mn
  • Second Part 60 mn
  • End

Performances

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Book your tickets today with the Season Pass

Available in audiodescription

Advantages

Full

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Audio clips

Simon Boccanegra (Saison 18/19) - Air d'Amelia Come In Questast's Ora Bruna Acte 1

Simon Boccanegra (Saison 18/19)- Air De Gabriele Cielo Pietoso Rendila Acte 2

Simon Boccanegra (Saison 18/19)- Air de Simon Plebe Plaritzi Popolo Acte 1

Simon Boccanegra (Saison 18/19)- Air d'Amelia et Simon Acte 1

Backstage

  • Pater dolorosus

    Video

    Pater dolorosus

  • The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards

    Article

    The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards

  • Podcast Simon Boccanegra

    Podcast

    Podcast Simon Boccanegra

  • Simon Boccanegra’s ship

    Slideshow

    Simon Boccanegra’s ship

© Elena Bauer / OnP

Pater dolorosus

04:58’

Video

Pater dolorosus

Interview with Ludovic Tézier

By Marion Mirande, Felipe Sanguinetti

The truth of Verdian feeling shines out from Simon Boccanegra. His love of coastal landscapes, his faith in social justice and his loss of wife and child are all biographical elements towards which this opera converges. Ludovic Tézier interprets the title role, sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh, bringing his immense experience as a baritone to one of Verdi's finest and most moving scores.

© Elena Bauer / OnP

The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards

Article

The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards

Interview with Calixto Bieito

04’

By Marion Mirande, Simon Hatab

Of great musical finesse, Simon Boccanegra is an opera that takes us on a voyage to the world of the Genoese doge - a politician and former corsair, redeemed by his relationship with his daughter. After his striking production of Aribert Reimann’s Lear and Carmen by Georges Bizet, Calixto Bieito returns to the Paris Opera to take up this neglected work by Verdi, offering us a reading as sensitive as it is enlightening.   

Simon Boccanegra is based on the eponymous work by the Spanish Romantic playwright, Antonio García Gutiérrez. What, in Verdi, remains of his drama?

The romantic aesthetic fascinated Verdi, that of Schiller particularly, and of course, that of Spain. In the subjects tackled by Spanish Romanticism, he found echoes of situations familiar to him: a father love for his child; confrontations with death; hatred and family feuds ... Themes that resonate strongly with Spanish history, past and present. For me, the most emblematic work of Spanish identity belongs to the Romantic period: the painting by Francisco Goya, The Second of May 1808 in Madrid. In it I perceive the expression of the Latin spirit, explosive and rebellious. One might think that the extreme behaviour portrayed in theatre or in the arts is the stuff of mythology and is exaggerated. But it is not. This impetuosity is characteristic of the Spanish, notably of people one meets in the villages, as is also the case in Italian culture, where emotions are felt very intensely, even beyond reason.   

You once qualified this opera as a strange work... In what way is it strange?

Simon Boccanegra differs noticeably from Verdi’s other operas, such as Il Trovatore or La Traviata. The music is less well-known ... Verdi concentrated here on the characters and their personalities. He sought to underline their depth of feeling. This makes it a very complex opera from a psychological point of view, posing numerous enigmas concerning Mankind and human nature. Verdi stripped away the varnish of appearances in order to question the very essence of his characters and reveal their intimate natures. This is also true of the treatment of the father-daughter relationship which also appears in several of his other works. In Simon Boccanegra, however, it is more thoughtful and profound.   

How do you envisage the interactions between the private and public spheres that punctuate the work from beginning to end?

Simon’s peace-making policy has its origins in his love for his daughter, but also in her loss which prompts him to seek a lost harmony. A quest that will unfortunately prove sterile... The character’s sadness echoes today's world in which disillusionment with humanity is every day palpable. As well as transforming Gutiérrez’s text, Arrigo Boito’s inclusion in the libretto of Petrarch’s letter calling for reconciliation confers on Simon a humanist dimension. His exhortation for peace has not been common in the mouths of politicians, either in Verdi’s day or in our own.

Simon Boccanegra is a work in which the sea is omnipresent. Have you tried to give the maritime image a more up-to-date, political resonance?

For Simon, the sea is synonymous with freedom. The immigrant crisis reminds us daily that the sea is also murderous. However, that wasn’t a theme I wished to take up. It didn’t seem really opportune. Above all, I tried to explore what there is within Simon, the memories he keeps locked inside him, the dreams, the nightmares. Therefore I had to imagine a mental space, a refuge, that would allow him to escape from his grief to the obscure zones of his soul and to find once more the feeling of liberty that was once afforded him by the sea.    

© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Thierry Le Mage

Podcast Simon Boccanegra

Podcast

Podcast Simon Boccanegra

"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" - by France Musique

07’

By Nathalie Moller, France Musique

"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" offers original incursions into the season thanks to broadcasts produced by France Musique and the Paris Opera. For each opera or ballet production, Nathalie Moller (opera) and Jean-Baptiste Urbain (dance), present the works and artists you are going to discover when you attend performances in our theatres.  

© Elena Bauer / OnP

Slideshow

Simon Boccanegra’s ship

An interview with José Sciuto, Deputy Artistic Director of the Workshops

By Cyril Pesenti

“The sea is an essential element in the opera Simon Boccanegra. In Calixto Bieito’s production, that sea has retreated, leaving a huge ship's hull washed up on the stage. The construction of this set was the fruit of a complex and meticulous process, involving almost all the craftspeople in the various workshops—from the research and design office to the workshops specialising in ironwork, carpentry, composite materials, painting, and sculpture, etc. This was an extremely “technological” set: To build it, a three-dimensional scan of a scale model of the ship, created by the sculpture workshop, allowed the design office to create a blueprint for the surface of the hull and its inner structure. Using these components as a starting point, a large number of metallic pieces were laser-cut and then assembled. Some thirty moulds were prepared to create the metal plates for the hull. These plates were also designed in a way that they could be used as a projection surface for the videos that director Calixto Bieito is so fond of.”

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Ce spectacle fait l’objet d’une captation réalisée par François Roussillon, coproduite par l’Opéra national de Paris et FRA Productions, avec la participation de France 2, avec le soutien du CNC et de la Fondation Orange, mécène des retransmissions audiovisuelles de l’Opéra national de Paris. Ce spectacle sera retransmis en direct sur Culturebox le 13 décembre 2018 à 19h30. Il sera également retransmis le même jour en direct avec le concours de Fra Cinéma, dans les cinémas UGC, dans le cadre de leur saison « Viva l’Opéra ! », dans les cinémas CGR et dans des cinémas indépendants en France et dans le monde entier. Il sera retransmis ultérieurement sur France 2.
Radiodiffusion sur France Musique le 30 décembre 2018 à 20h.

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