Le Carnaval, Mascarade Royale

Le Carnaval, Mascarade Royale
Music by John Baptist Lulli

Opéra-ballet
Libretto by Philippe Quinault
critical edition edited by Bernardo Ticci – BTE2025
from an idea by Marcello Corvino

Première Dessus Valeria La Grotta
Deuxième Dessus Giuseppina Bridelli
Haute-Contre Philippe Talbot
Taille Cyril Auvity
Premier Basse Biagio Pizzuti
Deuxième Basse Alexandre Baldo

Dancers
Mariana Porceddu, Giada Inserra, Leila Ghiabbi, Francesco Saverio Cifaldi, Mario Consolazio, Marianna Caratelli, Ginevra Cicatello, Maurizio Paolantonio

Direction and scenes Emiliano Pellisari
Choreography Emiliano Pellisari and Mariana Porceddu
Costumes Daniela Piazza
Concept art Nora Bujdoso
Lighting design Emiliano Pellisari and Gregory Zencher

Modo Antiquo Orchestra
Conductor Federico Maria Sardelli
Choir The Grand Prince’s Musicians
Choir conductor and assistant director Samuel Lastrucci

Stage director Claudia Spogli
Assistant stage director Maristella Ragnedda
Lighting assistant Mattia Mazzini
Collaborative pianists Enrico Bissolo and Nicola Lamon
Theatrical tailoring Lucia Fortuna
Tailors Isabella Franzoni, Sonia Gallerani
Wigs and accessories Simonetta Taibi and Zein Batayneh
Makeup Luca Oblach and Lucia Mariotti

WORLD PREMIERE
NEW PRODUCTION
Production Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Ferrara
Coproduction Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Modena
In collaboration with Orchestra Modo Antiquo and NoGravity Theatre

After 350 years, Le Carnaval, Mascarade Royale returns to shine in its World Premiere at Ferrara’s Municipal Theater. More than three and a half centuries after its triumph at the court of Louis XIV, the epic ballet opéra Le Carnaval, Mascarade Royale is reborn in a magnificent new production by the Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, co-produced with Teatro Comunale Modena. A masterpiece by Giovanni Battista Lulli and a symbol of the Sun King’s court, the show, conceived by Marcello Corvino, combines the score entrusted to Federico Maria Sardelli and at the orchestra Modo Antiquo, with the dancers of NoGravity, directed by Emiliano Pellisari, who fuse music and movement in a contemporary staging inspired by Baroque theater. The result is a performance in which Carnival is transformed into a space of freedom, metamorphosis and invention.

Court ballet experienced a season of extraordinary vitality in the France of Louis XIV, who in Jean-Baptiste Lully found the perfect ally to bring to the pinnacle of perfection what had become an elite form of entertainment and a valuable tool for celebrating absolute power.

Le carnaval debuted at the Louvre in January 1668 and was revived at the Opéra in the fall of 1675, with texts by Benserade, Molière, and Quinault. In a bizarre anthology of theatrical scenes, characters drawn from the pastoral, bourgeois, and commedia dell’arte worlds take turns on stage, without neglecting the exoticisms and “Turkishness” motifs so much in vogue at the time. Harlequin and Trivellino, Punchinello and Scaramouche, the bourgeois gentleman, the shepherds of Arcadia, the Ottoman Mufti, Spaniards, Italians, Gypsies, Basques and Egyptians enliven the different entrée of the Mascarade royal, in a solemn yet playful homage to the carnival, a moment of renewed social unity that sets no limits to the imagination.