HAD I KNOWN PERGOLESI Documentary Zürich 2021 Anna Bonitatibus, Delphine Galou, Vivica Genaux, Joelle Harvey, Lauren Snouffer
Popular Singers in this Opera Recording
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Had I known Pergolesior Hätte ich Pergolesi kennengelernt
- Composer: Pergolesi Giovanni Battista
- Libretto:
- Venue & Opera Company: Zürich Switzerland, Zurich Opera House
- Recorded: 2020
- Type: Other
- Singers: Anna Bonitatibus, Thomas Erlank, Delphine Galou, Vivica Genaux, Joelle Harvey, Lauren Snouffer
- Conductor: Ottavio Dantone
- Orchestra: ORCHESTRA LA SCINTILLA
- Stage Director: David Marton
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: CantosFilm
- TV Director: David Marton
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- This Recording is NOT AVAILABLE from a proper commercial or public source
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
It is the summer of 2020, plagued by Covid-19, in a retirement home in the flight path area of Zurich Airport. Instead of aircraft noise, the residents are hearing Pergolesi’s arias from the opera „L’Olimpiade.“ The lively compositions of the twenty-five-year-old genius from 18th-century Naples prompt the elderly to talk about their lives. In doing so, they unwittingly broach the central conflict of the opera: namely, the relationship between young people looking for their path in life and their controlling parents. In the weeks spent together, Pergolesi’s arias merged with biographies full of personal dramas such as childlessness, fleeing the home country, the Holocaust and child abuse. The result is a unique musical film that follows the structure of a Baroque opera by constantly alternating between conversation and music, and which thereby achieves a poetic synthesis between everyday reality and classical music.