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Frederiksberg Castle will act as operatic scenery for scenes from some of the most popular operas which will be performed in the beautiful castle yard.
The castle concert is tailor-made for Frederiksberg Castle and inspired by the historic events and personalities associated with the castle. The emcee is theatre historian Alette Scavenius who will tell us about both the castle and the music and in this way link the operatic scenes with local history.
The Swedish-Danish opera society ØresundsOperan presents some of the most sensual and enticing moments from the 19th century operaratic repertoire. Stories of tragic love of mythological dimensions were in vogue at the time, and both Gounod and Bellini set Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to music while Ambroise Thomas transformed Hamlet into a love story.
In almost all these operas, the heroine meets a tragic fate. Julie dies with her Romeo, Ophelia becomes insane and kills herself. Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor also becomes insane and dies, while the Asian heroines of Madama Butterfly and Lakmé both kill themselves for the sake of unrequited love. In Debussy's gothic tale Pelléas et Mélisande from 1902, the heroine is stabbed in the arms of her lover.
But how beautiful their singing is as they meet their fate. What would be unbearable in real life, is transformed into pure pleasure in the mysterious world of opera.
However, if the audience should after all want something to cheer them up, the ØresundsOperan provides this as well in the form of treats from Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore – comic operas in which all lovers are happily united in the end.