love, death, torture and power

Vincenzo Bellini’s opera enters the repertoire of the Paris National Opera. Peter Sellars, in fact, makes an implacable charge against tyranny and torture.

Vincenzo Bellini’s opera, Beatrice di Tenda, is original in more than one way. The loves are peripheral, the choruses are a character in their own right and the themes are deeply political: justice used for the benefit of the powerful, militias serving the strongest, authoritarianism as a political model and torture as a means of governance.

Director Peter Sellars, who is tackling an Italian opera for the first time, brings surgical precision and a cold aesthetic by transposing the story into an indefinite present. The opera opens with two employees installing two surveillance cameras in a steel-walled palace. Armed men in black watch over the master of the place.

The question

Who is Beatrice di Tenda? Before becoming the heroine of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera in 1833, she was a powerful and wealthy woman, born in Lombardy in 1372. When her first husband died, she was at the head of an army and a great fortune. In 1412, she married Filippo Maria Visconti, almost twenty years her junior. The young Duke of Milan consolidates his power and turns against his wife six years later.

Accused of adultery, Beatrice di Tenda was subjected to torture on the orders of her husband, before being subsequently beheaded. Adultery is an effective pretext for getting rid of a powerful wife who has become a nuisance. Four centuries later, at the beginning of the 19th century, she became a romantic heroine.

Vincenzo Bellini seized on history to make it a universal work, an attack against despotism, a trial against torture. Obsessed by Beatrice di Tenda for 25 years, Peter Sellars has given new impetus to this bel canto. “It is an unknown, little-known opera. Bellini is a mysterious character. Béatrice was his penultimate opera. It is an experimental opera that seeks to open new worlds. At the time, it was a total failure. With Beatrice, Bellini decided to make his own opera, an opera of liberation, of courage, of challenge to all dictatorships. recalls the American director. At its creation, Beatrice di Tenda was only given three performances in March 1833.

On stage at the Opéra Bastille, baritone Quinn Kelsey admirably lends his voice and body to Filippo Visconti. He is this power-hungry duke who, in moments of doubt, strengthens his authoritarian side even more. “Would you give in to their complaints, would you be moved, oh my heart? No: replace vile compassion with inflexible rigor”, sings the future responsible for femicide. Soprano Tamara Wilson is gripping as an innocent overwhelmed by ingratitude and moving as a martyr heading towards the supreme sacrifice. Note the performances of the Pati brothers, notably the elder Pene in Orombello. The power and nuances of his voice ignited the room. The tenor reinforces his immense talent, opera after opera. Beatrice di Tenda, an opera in a whirlwind of emotions which also addresses reason.

The sheet

Title : Beatrice di Tenda

Music : Vincenzo Bellini

Booklet : Felice Romani

Staging : Peter Sellars

Musical direction : Mark Wigglesworth

Decors : George Tsypin

Conductor of choirs : Ching-Lien Wu

Duration : 3 hours with 1 intermission

Language : italian – surtitles fFrench / English

Place : Opéra Bastille, place de la Bastille, 75012 Paris

Until March 7, 2024