LA SONNAMBULA Düsseldorf 2023 Stacey Alleaume, Edgardo Rocha, Bogdan Taloș

In the apparent idyll in the middle of the Swiss Alps, a secluded village society is preparing for the next wedding. This time Amina should be the lucky one, the groom Elvino. But he quickly turns back to his former wife, because: The bride sleepwalks into the bed of a stranger who has just arrived. The villagers, however, believe Count Rodolfo, son of the former landlord and who is traveling incognito, in the protestations of innocence just as little as Amina does, until she sleepwalks again and the ingrained collective belief in ghosts is put to a stubborn test.

In Bellini’s work, the motif of sleepwalking has utopian power between the most beautiful coloratura and voluptuous melodies. The focus is not on the lubricity of a sex-moral finger-wagging society, but on an escapism that makes the longing for freedom and departure painfully clear. Johannes Erath will narrate this somnambulistic topos of romanticism between idyll and cliff edge for the stage. In 2020/21 he staged “Vissi d’arte – A declaration of love to the opera” at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.