ARMIDA

(Pic: Renee Fleming)

Renee Fleming and award-winning director Mary Zimmerman team up in Rossini’s Armida.

The nouvelle grande dame of opera, Renee Fleming takes on the wicked, yet enchanting title role in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Giaocchino Rossini’s Armida, which opens at all Cinema Nouveau theatres on May 28, 2010.

Singing Armida for the first time on the Metropolitan Opera stage, Fleming says: “One of the greatest joys of performing is inhabiting a character who lies in total opposition to who I am. A man-destroying sorceress has captured the creative imagination of many writers and composers, not to mention interpreters.”

In this new contemporary interpretation of the opera, Fleming takes direction from Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman who had this to say about discovering the opera, “It’s like coming across a buried treasure under the sea, a box of jewels. … We’re trying to use simple methods of old-time theatre in the way the opera instructs you to. All the theatrical enchantment that the libretto and score call for—the power of change and transformation—is a mirror of the sorceress’s power.”

To imagine the sublime realm of Rossini’s mythical tale, Zimmerman teams up with the set and costume designer Richard Hudson, who created the sets for Julie Taymor’s production of The Lion King. Hudson has created a vivid and fantastical world of red poppies, giant spiders, brightly coloured parrots, and other dazzling visual elements. The work of lighting designer Brian MacDevitt and choreographers Graciela Daniele and Daniel Pelzig helps ensure that the magical images let the opera’s dramatic and musical riches take centre stage.
On stage with Fleming is an army of Christian soldiers, which features no fewer than six tenors who fall under her spell. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee sings Rinaldo, Armida’s lover and victim and Riccardo Frizza conducts. Set in the time of the crusades and inspired by the 16th-century epic Gerusalemme Liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered”) by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, Armida tells the story of a seductive sorceress who lures Christian soldiers to her island prison.

In addition to the screening of this phenomenal mythical opera, Cinema Nouveau will host Opera Nights, a pilot project that is designed to educate cinema audiences about the long-standing tradition of opera. “We’re really just trying to give people an opportunity to learn and appreciate this beautiful art form,” says Raksha Singh, Marketing Manager, Ster-Kinekor Cinema Nouveau. “Often times, people sit through an opera, appreciate its music without necessarily following along the story line. We want people to get a brief background about the opera, take them through the important elements in the music and the historical era during which that opera was performed.”

In KwaZulu-Natal, Armida will be screened at Ster-Kinekor’s Cinema Nouveau at Gateway.