Category: Opera in five acts
Language: French
Running times: 2h35 (including interval)
Premiered: 1777, Académie royale de musique (Paris)
New production: 5 November 2022, Opéra-Comique
Stage director: Lilo Baur • Set designer: Bruno de Lavenère • Costume designer: Alain Blanchot • Lighting designer: Laurent Castaingt
Director of Artistic Coordination, Production and Development
In a few words
When Syria was a land of crusades and legends, its queen Armide was not only content to capture Christian knights, but also captivated them with her charms. Renaud, the bravest of them all, sets out to free his companions. Against all odds, the invincible magician falls in love with him, and her unnatural love proves destructive...
Concept
“This magnificent tragedy is more the story of an inner conflict, that of Armide, than an epic text confronting the representatives of two communities against the background of religious wars. [...] What interests me is to show Armide's particular power. [...] Armide's power is above all that of a magician, whose art is a poetic form of manipulation.”
Lilo Baur, director
Press review
“Lilo Baur transcends the decorative in a staging that roots the passions of Armide and Renaud in a sylvan mode that is by turns enchanting and desolate.”
Altamusica, 14 November 2022, Thomas Deschamps
“Lilo Baur offers a show with an elegant, even fascinating aesthetic. Indeed, the sets are sumptuous and the lighting effects striking. How can one not be seduced by the tree with its sprawling branches, on the edge of a shoreline subject to variations in luminosity that transform the earth into sky and the sky into earth? Or the luxuriant vegetation that enchantingly floods the entire scene.”
Baroque News, 11 November 2022, Ruggero Meli
Cast
Number of Principals: 8
Chorus / parts (S/A/T/B): 28 (8/6/7/7)
Extras: 3 dancers
Instrumentation
6-5-4-5-2 / 2.2.2.2 / 2.2.0.0 / 1perc(timp)
Volume of the production
Set and props 3 containers
Other info
Last performed : Opéra-Comique, 2022
Production : Opéra-Comique
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