FRANCESCO CAVALLI: VENETIAN BAROQUE IN THE SPOTLIGHT AT AIX-EN-PROVENCE
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This summer, a masterpiece by Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) will enter the Festival d’Aix repertoire: La Calisto (1651), in a production staged by Jetske Mijnssen, under the musical direction of Sébastien Daucé conducting the ensemble Correspondances. The Festival, which has previously showcased two rare and forgotten operas by Cavalli (Elena in 2013 and Erismena in 2017) followed by a cycle of three works dedicated to Monteverdi’s oeuvre (between 2021 and 2024), continues its celebration of Venetian opera by revisiting the prolific work of Francesco Cavalli.
REDISCOVERING FRANCESCO CAVALLI THROUGH HIS LOST AND FORGOTTEN WORKS
Since its inception in 1948, the Festival d’Aix has made significant contributions to the discovery and rediscovery of rare operatic and instrumental works, beginning with the Mozart repertoire. Baroque music — especially the revival of little-known scores and compositions — has become a cornerstone of the Festival’s programming. This was the case, for example, with Rameau’s Platée, an opéra-bouffe reintroduced to audiences in 1956 at the Théâtre de l’Archevêché; and later with Les Boréades (1982), which made its scenic premiere in Aix-en-Provence under the baton of John-Eliot Gardiner. The Festival has also promoted early Baroque music, with theatrical adaptations of Monteverdi’s madrigals during the 1950s and 1960s. This tradition has continued into the twenty-first century, with regularly programmed operas by Claudio Monteverdi and his most famous student, Francesco Cavalli. In the 2010s, Bernard Foccroulle, in collaboration with Leonardo García Alarcón, presented two works by Francesco Cavalli: Elena (2013) and Erismena (2017).
Conductor Leonardo García Alarcón has been instrumental in bringing Cavalli’s music back to opera stages in the twenty-first century. Although early revivals occurred in the late twentieth century under such conductors as Sir Raymond Leppard and René Jacobs, the Argentine conductor took up Cavalli’s works with his ensemble, Cappella Mediterranea, and has frequently compared Cavalli's musical genius to Mozart's. In 2013, following the release of a critical edition of Cavalli’s 27 operas, Alarcón revived two works by the Venetian Master at the Festival d’Aix. That same year, he brought Elena back to the stage, more than 350 years after its last performance. He recorded an album of Cavalli's greatest arias (2015) and introduced Cavalli to the Paris Opera with Eliogabalo (2016). In 2017, he presented Erismena, another jewel of Venetian Baroque, at Aix.
2013 – ELENA
In the summer of 2013, the Festival d’Aix staged the first full production of Elena since its last performance in 1659. Like La Calisto, Elena resulted from the collaboration between Francesco Cavalli and librettist Giovanni Faustini — but Faustini died in 1651, just before he could complete the libretto. Other collaborators subsequently stepped in; and several years later an opera emerged that would have, in fact, been nearly contemporary with La Calisto in Cavalli’s own body of work. The story, which depicts the youth of Helen of Sparta prior to her abduction, provides ample opportunity for twists, disguises, deception and romantic abductions. Created during a flourishing period for the aesthetic development of Venetian opera in private theatres, the opera skilfully blends genres — an area in which Francesco Cavalli excels — resulting in an entertaining yet insightful exploration of romantic relationships.
For the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Cappella Mediterranea presented a three-hour-long, streamlined version. The score included arias that require virtuosic vocal performances, provided by a talented cast of young artists, including Fernando Guimaraes (Theseus), Solenn Lavanant Linke (Hippolyte), Anna Reinhold, Scott Conner, Mariana Flores, and Emöke Barath in the role of Helen, alongside Romanian countertenor Valer Barna-Sabadus as Menelaus.
Like L’incoronazione di Poppea, Elena explores romantic desire embroiled with power dynamics. Jean-Yves Ruf staged these seductive interactions within an arena recreated at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume; the setting transformed according to the shifting desires and emotional journeys of the characters, with the help of remarkable drapery effects. This production of Elena became a landmark event in the operatic world; and thanks to its unanimous acclaim, it would subsequently tour throughout Europe for several years. Since then, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence has continued to programme Cavalli's rich body of work.
2017 – ERISMENA
In the years that followed, Leonardo García Alarcón would help keep Francesco Cavalli’s oeuvre in the spotlight. Still with his ensemble, he presented a production of Il Giasone (1649) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2016; and in the summer of 2017, he returned to Aix to complete this exploration with Erismena. Productions of Erismena are especially rare: the opera had not been performed in its complete version since its success in the seventeenth century, although fragments had been exhumed in the 1960s by Alan Curtis. Very different in its structure from Elena, Erismena consists of a series of short ariosos, with few recitatives.
The opera contrasts with the mythological subjects more traditionally handled by Francesco Cavalli, and unfolds a lively tragi-comic aesthetic that is his hallmark. Created in the heart of the composer’s prolific Venetian period, the opera is a vast entanglement of multiple unfaithful lovers, full of disguises and sentimental intrigues.
Jean Bellorini staged his first production at the Festival d’Aix with Erismena, directing this large gallery of characters, dressed in costumes designed by Macha Makeïeff in a colourful gothic spirit, blending modern sensuality with extravagant baroque. He created a true troupe around Leonardo García Alarcón, made up mainly of former artists from the Festival’s Académie, and of participants of the 2017 Voice Residency, including mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, countertenor Jakub Józef Orlińsk, and Susanna Hurrell.
2025 – LA CALISTO
While Leonardo García Alarcón remains a mainstay at the Festival — he has conducted Monteverdi on a regular basis since 2022 — Sébastien Daucé and the ensemble Correspondances are taking up Cavalli’s mantle this year. Daucé and his ensemble, who specialise in Grand Siècle music, previously performed Combattimento: The Black Swan Theory (2021), an original production with works by Monteverdi, Cavalli and Rossi.
While not encompassing the same degree of near-total rediscovery that Elena and Erismena entailed, the 2025 production of La Calisto confirms Cavalli’s body of work as a classic of the Venetian Baroque repertoire. With this third production in barely ten years, the Festival d’Aix is gradually establishing itself as one of the key venues for introducing audiences to the celebratory dramaturgy and refined music of Francesco Cavalli.
Anne Le Berre
