FULL LE PROPHETE (Meyerbeer) Karlsruhe 2015 Marc Heller, Ewa Wolak, Ina Schlingensiepen
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Le Prophete
- Composer: Meyerbeer Giacomo
- Libretto: Eugene Scribe, Emile Deschamps Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Recorded: October 2015
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Marc Heller, Ewa Wolak, Ina Schlingensiepen, Avtandil Kaspeli, Matthias Wohlbrecht, Lucia Lucas, Armin Kolarczyk
- Conductor: Johannes Willig
- Orchestra: Orchester Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe
- Chorus: Chor des Badischesn Staatstheaters Karlsruhe
- Stage Director: Tobias Kratzer
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Giacomo Meyerbeer Sohn
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Unknown
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Le prophète (The Prophet) is a grand opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer, which was premiered in Paris on 16 April 1849. The French-language libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, after passages from the Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations by Voltaire. The plot is based on the life of John of Leiden, Anabaptist leader and self-proclaimed “King of Münster” in the 16th century.
After the brilliant success of their grand opera Les Huguenots (1836), Meyerbeer and his librettist Scribe decided to collaborate again on a piece based on a historical religious conflict. Meyerbeer’s great personal wealth and his duties as official court composer to King Frederick William IV of Prussia meant that there was no hurry to complete the opera, and it was more than a decade in the composition and planning. Le prophète was first performed by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier on 16 April 1849. In the audience at the work’s premiere were Chopin, Verdi, Théophile Gautier, Delacroix, Charles Dickens, Ivan Turgenev and Berlioz, among others.[1] The production featured costumes by Paul Lormier and sets by Charles-Antoine Cambon and Joseph Thierry (acts 1 and 4), Charles Séchan (acts 2 and 5), and Édouard Desplechin (act 3). It involved the first use ever on stage of Léon Foucault and Jules Duboscq’s electric arc light (régulateur à arc électrique), imitating the effect of sunlight.
The creators of the three main roles were Jeanne-Anaïs Castellan as Berthe, Pauline Viardot as Fidès, and Gustave-Hippolyte Roger as Jean. A sensational success at its premiere, the second city to hear it was London, at Covent Garden on 24 July of the same year. It was given all over Germany in 1850, as well as in Vienna, Lisbon, Antwerp, New Orleans, Budapest, Brussels, Prague and Basel. Its tremendous success continued throughout the 19th and into the early 20th century.
Like others of Meyerbeer’s operas, Le prophète lost favor in the early part of the twentieth century and it fell out of the operatic repertoire worldwide, except for very occasional revivals. The Metropolitan Opera revived the opera in 1918 as a vehicle for star tenor Enrico Caruso. Since the Second World War notable productions have included: Zürich in 1962, Deutsche Opera Berlin in 1966 (both starring Sandra Warfield and James McCracken) and the Metropolitan Opera in 1977 with Marilyn Horne as Fidès, directed by John Dexter. At the Vienna State Opera in 1998 the opera was given in a production by Hans Neuenfels with Plácido Domingo and Agnes Baltsa in the leading roles. Beginning in 2015, new productions of Le prophète are again appearing in European opera houses.
Quoted from Wikipedia