Luigi Cherubini: Médée

Luigi Cherubini: Médée
comic opera (tragedy) in three acts, original French version 1797

premiered at the Théâtre Feydeau, Paris, on March 13, 1797

Libretto by François-Benoit Hoffman,
adaptation: Jean-Yves Ruf and Stephen Sazio

ORCHESTRA DIJON BOURGOGNE
DIJON OPERA CHOIR

MUSICAL DIRECTION Nicolas Krüger
STAGE DIRECTION Jean-Yves Ruf
SET DESIGN Laure Pichat
COSTUMES Claudia Jenatsch
LIGHTING Christian Dubet
SOUND Jean-Damien Ratel, in collaboration
with David Jackson, composer
VIDEO DIRECTION Rémi Briand - R. Productions
MAKEUP | HAIRDRESSING Cécile Kretschmar

MEDEA Tineke van Ingelgem
JASON Avi Klemberg
CRÉON Frédéric Goncalves
DIRECTION Magali Arnault Stanczak
NÉRIS Yete Queiroz
1st DIRCE MAID Dima Bawab
2nd DIRCE MAID Léa Desandre
SONS OF JASON & MEDEA (alternating)
Erwan and Nils Ruf
Isaac El Hadad and Quentin Mura

A mother who avenges her husband's betrayal in the blood of their own children: Medea is undoubtedly the most violent and chilling that has come down to us from ancient Greece. It depicts a taboo that revolts us and sends us back to the darkest depths of the human soul, infanticide.

Giving death to the flesh of one's flesh, feasting on the blood of one's blood, what excesses of hatred can lead to this ultimate horror? Scorned, repudiated, outraged, Medea's soul lives only on a single affect, stretched entirely towards the satisfaction of a single imperious desire that blinds her and sows death in its path: vengeance, the ultimate jubilation before hell engulfs her by delivering the world to the flames. Medea thus appears as the reverse double of the other vengeful fury of Greek mythology, Electra. But where Agamemnon's daughter ruminates to the point of madness on an act that she will leave to another, Medea fulfills her destiny to the end and exults in horror itself. Abomination and infamy are attractive things in the theater: from Marc-Antoine Charpentier in 1635 to Michèle Reverdy in 2003, many composers will put them on stage. Among them, Luigi Cherubini deserves a special place. Missing link between classicism and romanticism, whose clarity and dark torments he fuses, this Florentine composer established in Paris, admired by Haydn and Beethoven as well as Berlioz and Wagner, knows how to use the possibilities offered by a genre then in full renewal. In its original French version with spoken texts — the same one chosen by the Dijon Opera — Médée offers a way of combining music and theatre that is formidably effective, using transitions between speech, melodrama (spoken text over music) and singing and expressive subtleties of orchestration that bring the drama to its incandescence. It is no coincidence that the great tragediennes of lyric art, led by Maria Callas, have made it their favourite opera. After Agrippina’s passion for power in 2011, it is also not surprising that this story full of sound and fury has won over theatre master Jean-Yves Ruf.