About the performance

To most opera enthusiasts, Giacomo Meyerbeer's DINORAH was long known from one single recording. It was the interpretation of the aria of mania "Ombre légère" by Maria Callas, who identified the title heroine of this work as the sister of other great women of opera such as Donizetti's Lucia, Amina from Bellini's LA SONNAMBULA, or Ophelia from Ambroise Thomas's HAMLET. All of these tender heroines fled a world that they no longer understood, into mania, murder, sleepwalking, or dancing like Dinorah with her own shadow.

In its entirety, however, the opera comique DINORAH OU LE PARDON DE PLOERMEL originally performed in 1859 is yet to be discovered: with this Meyerbeer is able to achieve a late playful-poetic and simultaneously humourously broken invocation of the Romantic world of spirits and faeries. In his combination of lyrical, folkloric and comical elements, Meyerbeer's scoring of the story about a married couple Dinorah and Hoël who are separated by mysterious circumstances during a pilgrimage and later happily reunited develops an entirely unique, subtle palette of tones.