Véronique Gens: Passion

Whether afflicted mothers, unhappy lovers, abandoned or raging women – on the opera stage we are constantly meeting strong female figures who defy their fate, sometimes heroic, sometimes silent and self-denying, but always self-assured and ready to suffer. The prominent French soprano Véronique Gens devotes this programme to these complex and stout-hearted operatic heroines in a very special way: together with the young ensemble Les Surprises and its artistic director Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, she has compiled a pasticcio opera out of works by leading French composers which sounds out the complex range of emotions between passion, bitter complaint, jealousy and desire for revenge. The programme was released on CD in 2021 and demands the ingenious and charismatic role interpretations that have propelled Veronique Gens and her vocal art to the top of the contemporary Baroque scene.

At the hub of this highly emotional pasticcio we meet not only the grand protagonists of Jean-Batiste Lully but also Marc Antoine Charpentier‘s Médée and figures from lesser-known works – some never previous published – by such composers as Henry Desmarest, André Cardinal Destouches, Pascal Collasse, François Rebel and François Francœur.

Shuttle included: Departure at 02.15 p.m. Wölfelstr. 4 at the Iwalewahaus (approx. 50 metres from the Opera House)