Gioacchino Rossini: L’Italiana In Algeri

[ADVERTISEMENT] The Tyrol Festival Erl continues its Rossini journey directly to Africa. Arriving from Seville, we make a slight detour via Switzerland as far as Algiers, the setting for the third Rossini opera in our growing repertoire. There we come across a Mustafa who is bored to death, tired of the submissive women in his Oriental harem, and on top of everything has had enough of his main wife Elvira. A change of scenery is necessary, a woman with sex appeal, character, self-assuredness – in other words an Italian!

The beautiful Isabella arrives and Mustafa is captivated by her. Hormones are topsy-turvy, and so Mustafa does not notice that Isabella is just as tyrannical as he is, and she revolutionizes his harem. As regards the casting for this new production we are following a policy similar to last winter: Gustav Kuhn conducts and will keep his watchful eye on the staging, directed for the first time by Wolfgang Berthold in the Festspielhaus.