Production for rent: Fortunio

The wife of an old notary gives in to the advances of a dashing soldier. To divert the husband's attention, they manipulate a young clerk in the office, Fortunio. Fortunio loves the lady madly.

“More than a kind and weak servant knight, Fortunio reveals himself as an absolute, disinterested lover, hostile to the social game of the small town, to the bourgeois success imposed by his uncle. A being of passion, dangerous and inhabited. A mystic, if not a fanatic of pure love, incapable of making the slightest concession to logic and the reasons of ordinary feelings.  He himself, as he confided to his cousin Landry, sees himself as a cursed, ill-tempered, lonely man whom fate will not spare. Only a woman could make him escape from his fundamental melancholy, to satisfy his thirst for the absolute, for truth and for love, unless her encounter causes him such an upheaval that he dies.”

Denis Podalydès, director

“Denis Podalydès has an intimate knowledge of Musset's theatre: underneath the humour and irony, underneath the brilliant wit that won the admiration of the Parisian public, he knows how to uncover the melancholy of the author of La Confession d'un enfant du siècle. This melancholy speaks so well to our time. First performed in 2009 at the Salle Favart, and revived in 2019 with the same success, his Fortunio, which contributed to the rediscovery of this unjustly forgotten work, is now considered a reference show.”

Sceneweb, 24 April 2022

“Reprise of Denis Podalydès’ sober and delicate staging.
In his production created in 2009, Denis Podalydès treats the lyrical comedy that is Fortunio as a lyrical drama, a cousin of Werther. In fact, the hero is driven by the same absolute love, the same selflessness, the same social incapacity. Visually, Éric Ruf creates a romantic setting, both poetic and melancholic, with its old-fashioned and rustic feel, with the mist or snowflakes that cover the stage.”

Olyrix, 13 December 2019, Damien Dutilleul

“A funny, brilliant and sensitive show.”

France Télévisions, Rédaction Culture, 13 December 2019, Lorenzo Ciavarini Azzi

Number of Principals: 11

Chorus / parts (S/A/T/B): 28 (7/7/7/7)

Extras: 1 actor, 2 children

Instrumentation

57

2.3.2.3 / 4.3.3.0 / tmp + 2 / harpe 10.8.6.5.4

5 stage musicians : 3 fifes, 2 tambourines

Volume of the production

Set and props 1 container

Other info

Last performed: April 2022, Opéra National de Lorraine

Coproduction: Opéra National de Lorraine