“Torna, deh torna Ulisse” (Return, Odysseus) – with these emphatic words, Penelope implores her husband, missing since the outbreak of the Trojan War, to return home. She has now been waiting for him for twenty years, stoically rejecting her suitors’ amorous advances. After a ten-year odyssey on the high seas, the hero Odysseus (Italian: Ulisse) manages to find his way home thanks to an oversight of the divine powers, but Penelope no longer recognises him. Only after several enquiries is she convinced of the returning hero’s identity. Did Penelope perhaps no longer want to recognise Ulisse? What does it mean when two people encounter one another again after so long a period? Although Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, probably first performed in Venice in 1640, takes us back to the origins of opera, the questions the work raises appear astonishingly modern. At the same time, Monteverdi does not omit trivial aspects: by means of the figure of Iro, he also shows a glutton among Penelope’s suitors who sees himself robbed of his creature comforts after her death. His lament, between seriousness and irony, is unique in the history of opera.

We have engaged the tenor Kurt Streit as the hero, while baroque star Sarah Mingardo will be singing Penelope. Willy Decker, familiar to wider audiences through his Salzburg production of La traviata, is responsible for the direction, while the performances will be conducted by baroque specialist Ivor Bolton.