Italy in Algiers

The setting is contemporary but unreal: a villa under construction – or perhaps never completed – in an indefinite, sun-drenched, timeless place. A space that contains everything but ensures nothing. Stolen or forgotten objects coexist with construction materials: sofas, deck chairs, office chairs turned into thrones, wheelbarrows repurposed as means of transport or bins elevated to ceremonial pedestals. The characters inhabit it naturally, as if it had always been this way: it is the distance between the chaos we see and the ease with which they traverse it that generates the comic.
Fabio Cherstich, director

On the musical level, a structural debt to Mozart’s lesson emerges: not so much in a more recognizable stylistic continuity, but in a deeper “theatrical mechanics” in the connotation of characters through music. An emblematic example is the beginning of Act I: Zulma, in order to persuade Elvira to accept Mustafà’s wishes, first imitates his figuration and then leads her on her own melody, in a dynamic of persuasion reminiscent of the relationship between Susanna and Figaro in the first duet of The Marriage of Figaro. These foundations provide the interpretive starting point, but without exhausting the Pesaro composer’s identity, which is distinguished by distinctive and original elements.
Alessandro Cadario, conductor