Représentation Lyrique - Messa da Requiem de Verdi

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine
Chœurs de l'Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine et de l'Opéra-Théâtre de Metz Métropole

Musical direction: Sora Elisabeth Lee
Stage design and scenography: César Vayssié

Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem is one of the most powerful sacred works in classical music. Verdi had originally envisaged a mass in tribute to Rossini, but it was the death of Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian writer admired by Verdi for his humanist and patriotic commitment, that prompted the composer to imagine this spiritual gesture expressing his fascination with the existential questions of universal judgment and the human condition.

Verdi brings an almost operatic dramatic expressiveness to Catholic liturgical texts, as evidenced by the famous evocation of divine wrath and the Last Judgment in the Dies Irae, with its startling crash of percussion and chorus.

This material could not fail to inspire César Vayssié, film director and polymorphous artist, who ventures beyond the limits of cinema towards a living art form whose relationship with the choral voice he explores here for the first time. It's a safe bet that this dialogue between images and choreographic language will find in the direction of Korean conductor Sora Elisabeth Lee an energy comparable to that which she deployed in the triptych Héroïne, performed last year at the Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine.

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