CREATED at the Teatro Novissimo of Venice, 1641

PERFORMANCE IN ITALIAN - OVERTITLES IN FRENCH NEW PRODUCTION OF THE DIJON OPERA

MUSIC Francesco Sacrati LIBRETTO Giulio Strozzi

MUSICAL DIRECTOR Leonardo García Alarcón

CAPPELLA MEDITERRANEA

STAGE DIRECTOR Jean-Yves Ruf

ASSISTANT TO STAGE DIRECTOR Anaïs de Courson

STAGE SETS Laure Pichat

COSTUMES Claudia Jenatsch

LIGHTING Christian Dubet

WIGS Cécile Kretschmar

WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE Cercle d’enterprises of the Dijon Opera, Le Cercle Galatée

CAST

DEIDAMIA Mariana Flores

ACHILLE Filippo Mineccia

ULISSE Carlo Vistoli

DIOMEDE Valerio Contaldo

LICOMEDE Alejandro Meerapfel

EUNUCO Kacper Szelążek

NODRICE Marcel Beekman

CAPITANO Salvo Vitale

AURORA | GIUNONE Julie Roset

TETIDE | VITTORIA Fiona McGown

VULCANO | GIOVE Scott Conner

FAMA | MINERVA Norma Nahoun

DONZELLA 1 Aurelie Marjot*

DONZELLA 2 Anna Piroli*

DONZELLA 3 Sarah Hauss*

PIRRO Ruben Ruf

*members of the Dijon Opera Choir

CO-PRODUCTION Dijon Opera Opéra Royal / Château de Versailles Spectacles

After an oracle predicts that her son Achilles will die in combat, Thetis hides him, dressed in girl’s clothing, among the daughters of king Licomedes. Unknown to the king, Achilles falls in love with the princess Deidamia, and a son is born from this union. Ulysses and Diomedes arrive in search of Achilles, whom they expect to embark with them for Troy. By a cunning stratagem, they reveal his identity. Abandoned, betrayed and desperate, Deidamia, in a ploy as ingenious as it is risky, pretends to succumb to madness, thus delaying the departure of the warriors, and by subtle means manages to rekindle Achilles’ love and win him back as husband. It was for the inauguration of the first theatre ever specifically built for operatic performances — the Teatro Novissimo — that La Finta Pazza was premiered in Venice on 14 January 1641. This premiere is a key date for multiple firsts: first opera of the composer Francesco Sacrati; first ingenious theatrical machinery developed by Torelli; first prima donna in history with the soprano Anna Renzi, for whom Sacrati composed the first "mad scene" of the genre. The success was immense — 12 performances in 17 days — making this opera the first lyric "hit". Toured by itinerant troupes throughout northern Italy, where it became an archetype of Venetian opera for decades, and helping to launch the exponential development of opera in Europe, La Finta Pazza would also play a seminal role in the conception of French opera: upon request from Mazarin, the work, partially adapted, would be performed in Paris in 1645.

For more than three centuries, La Finta Pazza was only known by its libretto, which played craftily on all the expectations of Venetian opera: double dimensions between heaven and earth, inversion of gender roles, meta-dramatic allusions, image-within-image between the space of the performance and the song itself. Beyond the mad scenes, it also launched a whole series of operatic staples, with genius heralding in a new dimension of ambivalent intrigues of which the baroque period could not get enough: the feigned insanity of Deidamia paradoxically allowed her to clearly state and reveal the truth in a manner made possible only by the mask of madness. Of Sacrati’s sacred music, of which nothing remained, we could only dream until 1983 and the discovery by musicologist Lorenzo Bianconi of a copy of the score.

This unexpected revelation finally allows us to comprehend, beyond second-hand commentary, the music by a composer who Giacomo Badoaro, librettist of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, described as "the moon to Monteverdi’s sun ", and to whom numerous musicologists have attributed the sublime "Pur ti miro" that closes L’incoronazione di Poppea. Thanks to Leonardo García Alarcón and Jean-Yves Ruf, this music will at last see its first stage production in France since 1645.