projects

Creation Semperoper Dresden

Sub-Plot
Intermezzo for soprano, two baritones, baroque bassoon and violone (2013)
Part of Mise en abyme
Text by Anne Gerber and Lucia Ronchetti
based on Didone abbandonata by Pietro Metastasio
Commission: Semperoper Dresden
Co-production with Opernhaus Halle
First performance: Semperoper Dresden, 6 April 2014
Norma Nahoun (Soprano), Pavol Kubàn (Baritone), Julian Arsenault (Baritone)
Stefan Meissner (Violone), Fabian Borggrefe (Baroque bassoon)
Felice Venanzoni (Conductor)
Anne Gerber (Dramaturgy), Arne Walther (Set), Frauke Schernau (Costumes)
Fabio Antoci (Light design), Axel Köhler (Direction)
Publisher: Edizioni musicali Rai Trade
Duration: ca. 15 m

Contrascena and Sub-Plot form part of a music theatre project for three seasons, conceived for the Semperoper in Dresden.
On the occasion of the production of the two intermezzos composed respectively by Domenico Sarro in 1724 and Giovanni Battista Martini in 1746, both based on the “Impresario delle Canarie” by Pietro Metastasio, the two new compositions will be presented in form of entr'acte.
The global project will explore the music theatre reform proposed by Metastasio for the 18th-century Italian, Austrian and German stages and his emerging position as librettist, dramaturge and director of his own productions.

Sub-Plot is a reduction of the opera seria Didone abbandonata created by Sarro and Metastasio in 1724 for the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples.
Fragments from the versions of the two prominent composers Jommelli and Hasse are quoted and elaborated for a reduced cast including  Enea, Jarba and Dido as characters and viol one and baroque bassoon as spectral orchestra, servants, soldiers, audience on stage or generic presences.

The Metastasian experiment, a play within a play, which reveals something of the complex and confusing process of Neapolitan productions of the period, will be reversed through the presentation of the micro-opera seri a as entr'acte of the original intermezzo "L'Impresario delle Canarie".

Maquette by Arne Walther