Cherubin

Composer: Massenet, Jules

Conductor: Villaume, Emmanuel

Orchestra: Cagliari Teatro Lirico Orchestra

Chorus: Cagliari Teatro Lirico Chorus

Chorus Master: Faidutti, Andrea

Cherubin: Richetti, Matteo

L'Aubergiste: Mosley, George

L'Ensoleillad: Ciofi, Patrizia

La Baronne: Palomba, Alessandra

La Comtesse: Bari, Teresa di

Le Baron: Novaro, Riccardo

Le Capitaine Ricardo: Giannino, Emanuele

Le Comte: Ebau, Nicola

Le Philosophe: Surian, Giorgio

Nina: Remigio, Carmela

Un Officier: Perucca, Alessandro

Set Designer: Edwards, Paul

Costume Designer: Edwards, Paul

Lighting Designer: Jacques, David

Choreographer: Curran, Paul

Stage Director: Curran, Paul

Television Director: Richetti, Matteo

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Venue: Teatro Lirico di Cagliari

Playing Time: 02:05:05

Catalogue Number: 33508

UPC: 8007144335083

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Inspired by Francis de Croisset three-act comedy with the same title, Jules Massenet's Cherubin was completed in 1903. The stimuli that led Massenet to write an opera of eighteenth-century reminiscences may have been many and gave gone beyond the immediate enthusiasm he felt for Croisset's play. We might consider, for example, the fact that in the thirty year period between the 1880s and the first world war, Mozart was very fashionable in France.

The old Mozartian Cherubino of Le nozze di Figaro is no longer the young lad in his first naive contacts with women: his age moved on from 13 to 17 years and, of course, takes on more adolescent connotations: more hot-headed, impetuous, ephemeral and passionate. Massenet brings these aspects out well as he characterises Cherubin with vocal scoring that favours ample, intensely cantabile phrases, with leaps towards the acute register that give full vent to the lyrical soprano voice, with moments of sudden emphasis and equally rapid disappointments - a real tempest of hormones, light years away from the Voi che sapete of Mozart's page boy.