STAR-CROSS'D LOVERS
Romeo & Juliet, true love and opera at Vadstena Castle July-August 2010.
The 2010 summer season at Vadstena Academy is all about love. Star-Cross’d Lovers is a performance steeped in love; young, boundless, fated love. Two operas by 18th century masters Johann Adolph Hasse and Georg Anton Benda form a double bill at Vadstena Castle.
The tragic fates of Romeo and Juliet and Pyramus and Thisbe are reflected through two widely diverse temperaments and styles.
Piramo e Tisbe, directed by Nils Spangenberg, managing and artistic director of Vadstena Academy, opens the evening’s performance. The story of Pyramus and Thisbe, two young lovers who are forbidden to marry each other, who run away and then die through a grim twist of fate has touched people throughout the ages. It is based on the ill-fated lovers described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, on which Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is also believed to be based.
Mattias Ermedahl, who has previously performed at Vadstena Academy as a singer, has directed Romeo & Julia, which follows the intermission. In this second act, the audience is transported to another age and temperament: “Tybalt is dead! Romeo has fled! Juliet is waiting. Every second seems like an hour, every hour like a day. Follow the young couple’s final hours. Every encounter and every challenge constitutes a critical step on the road towards the inevitable end …” Benda’s librettist was directly inspired by Shakespeare’s play, but changed a lot of things...
Johann Adolph Hasse is one of the greatest composers of his period. He German, but he composed his music entirely in the Italian style. Piramo e Tisbe, with its many lovely virtuoso, emotional arias, duets and accompanied recitatives was the opera he was most pleased with. Although working within the confines of the opera seria tradition, Hasse takes an unexpected leap towards a more modern form of musical drama.
Georg Anton Benda’s opera Walder has previously been performed at Vadstena in co-operation with the Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg. Benda was a major German composer of the late 18th century working in the then popular Sturm und Drang tradition. Professor Anders Wiklund has brought out Hasse’s opera Piramo e Tisbe from 1758 and Benda’s Romeo und Julie from 1776 from the archives and has made a critical study of them as part of the very successful Vadstena Academy repertoire research project.
Director of Piramo e Tisbe: Nils Spangenberg
Director of Romeo & Julia: Mattias Ermedahl
Conductor: Olof Boman
Stage design and costumes: Marika Feinsilber
Ensemble: Carl Ackerfeldt, Sofi Asplund, Gunda-Marie Bruce, Frida Jansson, Calle Lindén, Rebecca Rasmussen, Jesper Säll
The orchestra consists of eighteen musicians performing on instruments of the period.
Performances at Vadstena Castle
First night: 23 July at 19.00
24, 26, 27, 29, 30 July at 19.00
1 August at 16.00; 2, 4, 5, 7 August at 19.00 and 8 August at 16.00
Length of performance: 3 hours including intermission.
ÖSTGÖTA ENSKILDA BANK, SAAB, ÖSTGÖTA BRANDSTODSBOLAG, HALLBECK CONSULTING, RICOH, ORSTADIUS,