CHERUBINI : LODOÏSKA

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 10th of July 2011 at 3.03 - 5  pm

CHERUBINI: Lodoïska, an opera in three acts
Count Floreski.............. Sébastien Guèze
Lodoïska....................... Nathalie Manfrino
Dourlinki....................... Pierre-Yves Pruvot
Titzikan......................... Philippe Do
Altamoras..................... Alain Buet
Lysinka......................... Hjördis Thébault
Varbel........................... Armando Noguera
Les Eléments Chorus, Le Cercle de l'Harmonie/Jérémie Rhorer  
(Italian Radio)


INTRODUCTION 
BACKGROUND
PIANO SCORE

For a libretto on PDF, do a Google search for this (copy it and insert in the google slot):
www.bobsdigitaloperashop.com/Libretti/Comp.../Cherubini-Lodoiska-CD

This work is described as a heroic comedy (it has a happy ending for the heroine); it is a rescue opera (like Fidelio).  The heroine is a princess, in Poland around 1600; she is imprisoned in a castle by the villain Count Floreski; the hero Dourlinki turns the tables on him, leaving him in solitary confinement, while Lodoïska is set free. The opera was composed during the French Revolution, and first performed in Paris in French in 1791; it proved to be a great success (under the circumstances) with hundreds of performances in France and Germany.

This Sunday's old rarity comes from the time of the French Revolution, and it was indeed a revolutionary opera, one of the first of the romantic kind; the French revolutionaires went crazy over it, and they forgave the composer for having previously served the aristocracy.

Cherubini's LODOÏSKA, a rescue story (like Fidelio and the Scarlet Pimpernel), but this is set in Poland around 1600, and it involves releasing a princess (Lodoïska) from imprisonment in a castle. More about this (though not a lot more, I have to say, information was hard to come by, not even a
synopsis) above.