Chi­haru Shio­ta | Idome­neo, re di Creta

Begin­ning in 2019 with Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, fol­lowed by Lully’s Atys in 2022, the Grand Théâtre de Genève’s cruise through the rarely sailed waters of opera-bal­let under the baton of Leonar­do Gar­cía Alar­cón con­tin­ues with this new pro­duc­tion whose cap­tain is none oth­er than the direc­tor of the Gene­va Bal­let, Sidi Lar­bi Cherkaoui. And to keep lin­ing up the mar­itime metaphors, he will be steer­ing his course towards Idome­neo, writ­ten for the court of the Elec­tor of Bavaria by a young man of 25, Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart. An opera built, so to speak, around a ter­ri­ble storm at sea, the result of the strug­gle between the god of the oceans Nep­tune, who favours the king of Crete Idome­neo on his return from the Tro­jan War, and Fate, who oppos­es him.

Fate, or as it is oth­er­wise known in oth­er parts, notably in the cul­tur­al waters of East Asia where Sidi Lar­bi Cherkaoui likes to cast his nets, kar­ma. One of the terms used for kar­ma, 箵 in Chi­nese yuan and in Japan­ese en, con­tains the silk thread rad­i­cal 糸 and can also mean the bor­der or hem of a gar­ment. Thread and its avatars – ropes, cables, laces and teth­ers – are the trade­mark of Japan­ese visu­al artist Chi­haru Shio­ta, who will design the sets for this pro­duc­tion. The threads she uses are red ones, a red thread being a pow­er­ful karmic tal­is­man in Japan and East Asia. With these threads, she weaves per­for­mances, body art and instal­la­tions in a pro­tean process explor­ing tem­po­ral­i­ty, move­ment, mem­o­ry and dreams, that demand men­tal and phys­i­cal involve­ment from the viewer.

Chi­haru Shio­ta and Sidi Lar­bi Cherkaoui will muster the forces of the Gene­va Bal­let, joined by Cherkaoui’s East­man com­pa­ny along with soloists, to acti­vate a mon­u­men­tal set where the red threads will form a palace, a rag­ing ocean, a gar­den or a sea mon­ster in con­tin­u­ous move­ment. Three sto­ries are inter­twined: a love tri­an­gle between Idomeneo’s son, Idamante, the Tro­jan princess Ilia and the princess of Argos, Elet­tra; the duel between a father trau­ma­tised by the Tro­jan war, and his son who seeks appease­ment and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion; and final­ly, as men­tioned, the con­fronta­tion between the gods and human des­tiny. With Bernard Richter in the title role, Lea Desan­dre as his son Idamante, Fed­er­i­ca Lom­bar­di as Elet­tra and Giu­lia Semen­za­to as Ilia, the Grand Théâtre brings togeth­er a quar­tet of high-fly­ing soloists who, under the direc­tion of Leonar­do Gar­cía Alar­cón, will make for a stel­lar per­for­mance, accom­pa­nied by Gar­cía Alarcón’s own Cap­pel­la Mediter­ranea, whose ranks will be aug­ment­ed for the occa­sion by the musi­cians of the Orchestre de Cham­bre de Genève.

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