Nadia Boulanger's Opera LA VILLE MORTE Comes to GNO in January

Performances are on January 19, 21, 24, 26, & 28, 2024

By: Stephi Wild Dec. 15, 2023

Nadia Boulanger's Opera LA VILLE MORTE Comes to GNO in January Image

The Greek National Opera (GNO) presents the Greek premiere of La Ville morte (The Dead City), the only opera composed by Nadia Boulanger—one of the most important conductors and music educators, and mentor to some of the greatest music figures of the 20th century—in collaboration with her mentor Raoul Pugno, to a libretto by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Staged for only the third time in over a century, La Ville morte will be presented by the GNO on the Alternative Stage at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens on January 19, 21, 24, 26, & 28, 2024, in a co-production with New York's Catapult Opera.

This co-production of La Ville morte is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance GNO's artistic outreach.

La Ville morte is based on the famous Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio's play of the same title, and was adapted into the operatic libretto by the poet himself. The opera tells a tragic and outrageous story of obsession and incestual desire among its four characters—Léonard, an archeologist (tenor Joshua Dennis), his sister Hébé (soprano Melissa Harvey), Alexandre, a poet (baritone Jorell Williams), and his wife Anne (mezzo soprano Laurie Rubin)—set amidst an excavation site of the ruins of the ancient city of Mycenae, Greece. The work's music reflects the impressionist musical aesthetic of the time, interspersed with echoes of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.

Although the opera had been scheduled to premiere at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 1914, Boulanger and Pugno's La Ville morte was never staged in its time because of the outbreak of the First World War. The opera was first performed only in 2005, at the Festival of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena with an orchestration based on the only act spared by a storage room fire; it was then performed for a second time, in concert, at the Göteborg Opera, Sweden, in March 2020.

Boulanger and Pugno's La Ville morte was hailed as one of the most important creative achievements of the great French conductor, music educator, and mentor to some of the greatest music figures of the 20th century (such as Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and Astor Piazzolla)

For this production, David Conte, one of Boulanger's last proteges, has supervised a full score orchestrated by composers Joseph Stillwell and Stefan Cwik, and based on Boulanger's recently discovered piano reduction of the orchestra music. Neal Goren conducts the cast and an 11-member instrumental ensemble, and the production is directed by Robin Guarino.

Following the production's premiere in Athens, Catapult Opera presents La Ville morte in its U.S. premiere in New York, April 19-21.