MOSES AND PHARAOH

Never had a larger subject been offered to a composer. Here the earth and its powers attempt to fight against God.

Honoré de Balzac, Massimilla Doni (1839)

We never stop rediscovering Rossini’s inexhaustible genius and its multiple facets! When Egyptomania was at its height, the French made Rossini their idol and he decided to adapt one of his Neapolitan operas, thus aiming to conquer the Paris Opera. Moses and Pharaoh tells the story of the Hebrew’s departure from Egypt, which climax is the famous crossing of the Red Sea. It is a spectacular grand opera punctuated by plagues and miracles: a work of unique greatness and dramatic power with striking chorus orchestration and demonstrative vocality; a work which fascinated Stendhal and Balzac in their time. Prestigious newcomers are part of this first presentation at the Festival d’Aix: the great specialist of the Italian 19th century Michele Mariotti conducts a very promising cast dominated by Michele Pertusi’s legendary Moses. The multiple award-winner Tobias Kratzer – known for his intelligent rereadings – reminds us of the complex realities of today’s Mediterranean world, between realism and utopia.

• NEW YORK TIMES
  Like in Resurrection, real-life tragedies are ambiguously but potently evoked – as they are, too, in Tobias Kratzer’s production of Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon.
  [...] Kratzer does not seem interested in angry indictments, or past accusations of complicity. His staging is, more subtly and powerfully, a sad, unsettling suggestion of our unmalicious but all-too-willing forgetfulness.
   
• FINANCIAL TIMES
  Aix Festival reviews: a spellbinging Moses and Pharaoh, a gut-wrenching Resurrection.
  Kratzer and his team have turned over every line of the libretto again and again, and the level of insight is boogling.
   
• LIBÉRATION
  Que ce soit sous le ciel étoilé de la cour de l’Archevêché, ou en direct, le 12 juillet sur Arte, il ne faut pas manquer ce rare et bel hommage au chant français.