Cleopatra orientale

PROGRAM

ANTON RUBINSTEIN • Overture Antonius und Kleopatra, Op. 116 (1890)

WOLFGANG A. MOZART • Arie des Sesto "Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio" aus der Oper La Clemenza di Tito KV 621

CHARLES GOUNOD • Ballet Music for the opera Faust (1868)

WOLFGANG A. MOZART • Motet for Soprano and Orchestra "Exsultate, jubilate", K. 165

RODION SHCHEDRIN • Kleopatra i zmeja (Cleopatra and the asp) – Dramatic scene for soprano and orchestra (2011)
World premiere – Work commissioned by the Salzburg Whitsun Festival

SERGEY PROKOFIEV • Stage music for Ägyptische Nächte (1933/34)

INFORMATION

End approx. 20:45.

PERFORMERS

SERIES

• Cleopatra raffinata
  Giulio Cesare in Egitto
• Cleopatra amorosa
  Antony and Cleopatra
• Cleopatra virtuosa
• Cleopatra sensuale
• Cleopatra tragica

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Cleopatra orientale

The reception of “Cleopatra” in Russia rested on two main pillars – the play by Shakespeare (whose most important Russian translator had been Boris Pasternak) as well as an oriental poem which Alexander Pushkin embedded into his story Egyptian Nights. In language both sensual and cold, Pushkin recounts how Cleopatra attends an opulent banquet and, tired of constant courtship, promises three men one night each, for which they pay with their lives. Thereby, Cleopatra liberates herself from the role of a victim of male sexual fantasies, dramatically reversing the balance of power between the sexes in a kind of feminist act. The two literary models, especially Cleopatra’s death scene as described by Shakespeare, but also Pushkin’s poem, are introduced here in a musical guise: in Sergey Prokofiev’s rarely-performed incidental music of 1934, the text is recited as a melodrama.