Abstract
Berlin-based theater and music theater director David Marton is known for exploring innovative theatrical forms. The coronavirus pandemic forced him to completely reconsider his original staging concept for Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Baroque opera L'Olimpiade. Together with Austrian filmmaker Sonja Aufderklamm, he made a documentary film about elderly residents of Zurich during the summer months, in which he played Pergolesi’s music to them and spoke to them about the arias and the themes found therein. On the stage of the Opernhaus, Marton combines these filmed moments with arias from the opera as they are sung live. The production, which breaks entirely new ground in terms of opera performance, is set to explore fresh areas of tension between sound, moving images and the stage; between opera and reality; between song and human destinies.
An important artistic partner for this Pergolesi production – which is also exceptional in musical terms – is conductor and harpsichordist Ottavio Dantone, who has performed more Pergolesi operas than any other contemporary conductor. Vivica Genaux and Anna Bonitatibus head up a star-studded, stylistically supreme ensemble of vocal soloists.