| Teatro Real | ||
| Alejo Pérez | Conductor | |
| Willy Decker | Director | |
| Wolfgang Gussmann | Set Designer | |
| Athol Farmer | Choreography | |
| Duncan Rock | Baritone | Waiter |
| Vicente Ombuena | Tenor | Concierge |
| Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid | ||
| Coro Intermezzo | ||
| John Daszak | Tenor | Gustav von Aschenbach |
| Peter Sidhom | Baritone | Traveller/ Elderly fop/ Old gondolier/ Hotel manager/ Hotel barber/ Leader of the players/ Voice of Dionysus |
| Anthony Roth Costanzo | Countertenor | Voice of Apollo |
Since classical antiquity, with Plato’s Phaedrus at the apex, artists and intellectuals have pursued the canon of ideal beauty. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Mann gave expression to his preoccupations in this regard in the Death in Venice. Immersed in a deep creative void, the writer Gustav Aschenbach struggled between Apollonian forces and Dionysian passion. The catalyst will be the teenager Tadzio, who he meets on his last trip to a decadent Venice ravaged by a cholera epidemic, foreshadowing the collapse of a world that will never return (the book was published in 1912). In his last opera, with a musical universe of colours and textures, Benjamin Britten, the great heir to Purcell, portrays the protagonist’s existential and aesthetic crisis over 17 scenes in which a tortured inner monologue unfolds. The stylised staging by Willy Decker, who describes the piece as “fascinating, full of ambiguity and misunderstandings”, underlines the intellectual and erotic tension that consumes the protagonist, highlighting his most dreamy side.
New production in Teatro Real
Production of Teatro Real, in coproduction with Gran Teatre del Liceu de Barcelona.
