LES PÊCHEURS DE PERLES Will Be Performed at Grand Theatre Geneve Next Month

During the second half of the 19th century, exoticism was all the rage on the opera stage. In 1863, 25-year-old Georges Bizet was commissioned to write a work that was set in Sri Lanka and filled with pagan rituals and attractive 'natives' - all European singers in brownface - expressing the bombastic emotions of a romantic melodrama. The Pearl Fishers presents a fairly typical operatic love triangle: Nadir (the tenor) loves Leïla (the soprano) and Zurga (the baritone) is his friend and unsuspecting rival.

All these unidimensional racialised characters still manage to derive great emotional relevance from Bizet's music. Which is why the young Dutch director Lotte de Beer thinks the work is worth another dive in search of its iridescent treasures. She finds them in the current craze for reality shows in an exotic location, because the implausible twists and turns in the story of Leila, Nadir and Zurga are just as believable as the pre-programmed twists and turns of a I'm a Celebrity... or Love Island.

You can book dinner on the performance day with this link.

Performances run December 10-26, 2021.

Learn more at https://billetterie.gtg.ch/selection/event/date?productId=10228364029798&gtmStepTracking=true.