Il viaggio a Reims

The staging is a co-production with Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen and Opera Australia, Sidney.

Il Viaggio a Reims by Gioachino Rossini is an unusual example of a “topical” operatic work of the 19^th century. The opera was written practically on “the topic of the day”: its characters are aiming to get to the coronation of Charles X. The whole of France had been looking forward to that event, the excitement was enormous. The pomp and ceremony of the coronation was seen as a symbol of return to the pre-revolutionary traditions of monarchy.

The coronation took place in Reims on the 28 May 1825 but only three weeks later, on the 19 June, the opera written by Rossini on the occasion premiered at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. The incredibly difficult parts were intended for the best performers of the time: Giuditta Pasta, Ester Mombelli, Laure Cinti, Marco Bordogni, Domenico Donzelli and Nicolas Levasseur sparkled at the premiere.

Librettist Luigi Balocchi used the themes from the novel Corinne or Italy by Madame de Staël, but essentially created an original plot. The action develops in the hotel “Golden Lily” where members of aristocracy from all over Europe stayed on their way to Reims. The guests included a poetess from Italy, a French countess, a Polish marquise, a German baron, Russian and Spanish generals… The noted guests were great eccentrics. They constantly find themselves in comic situations. They realise they have to cancel the trip that had brought them all there. The travellers, however, do not remain in gloom for too long and decide to give a banquet right there, in the hotel. Each guest makes a toast in the style of their native country. The opera finishes with a grand ensemble, a united celebration of the King on behalf of the whole of Europe.

The audience welcomed certain pieces with delight but on the whole, Reims was received in a cool manner and did not live up to its creators’ expectations. After some performances, the composer took away the score from the theatre and even declined a proposal to publish it for a substantial revenue. Three years later, working on the opera Le comte Ory, Rossini created almost the whole first act using pieces from Il Viaggio a Reims.

It seemed that the “coronation opera” was lost, but in 1977, in the library of the National Academy of St Cecilia in Rome, the fragments of the score that were not included in Le comte Ory, were found. In 1984, Il Viaggio a Reims was revived by the efforts of the musicologists and presented at The Rossini Opera Festival staged by director Luca Ronconi.

The cast included the leading artists of the world opera scene: Cecilia Gasdia, Lucia Valentini Terrani, Lella Cuberli, Katia Ricciarelli, Samuel Ramey, Ruggero Raimondi, Enzo Dara, Leo Nucci. It was conducted by Claudio Abbado.

Il Viaggio a Reims has been successfully competing with Le comte Ory, and even surpassing it in popularity, ever since. In Russia, the opera was first heard at The Stars of the White Nights festival in St Petersburg in 2001 (in a concert performance by the Academy of Young Opera singers under the leadership of Yuri Bashmet). The stage version was realised in 2005 by the Mariinsky Theatre together with the Parisian Théâtre du Châtelet (the musical director of the production was Valery Gergiev). In Moscow, Il Viaggio was performed in 2008 at the Chamber hall of the Moscow International House of Music and at the Concert Hall of the Gnesin Russian Music Academy by the young Russian singers from the International Vocal School headed by Dmitry Vdovin.

At the Bolshoi, the opera was firstly performed in the concert version in 2017 but only a year later, in 2018, a stage version was realised.

According to the stage director of the production, Damiano Michieletto, this opera was of such importance for its time as a mega show like the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup we see now. “These days, a coronation in an opera project is not spectacular enough to fascinate the audience of our time”, as Mr. Michieletto argues, “a special artistic solution, which would connect the opera story with modernity, is needed”.

The core of this solution is that the numerous participants of Il Viaggio divide into two groups. Some of them remain in their time, those are “historic” characters, the rest become our contemporaries. But where could the audience come across all those imagined characters? The answer is obvious to Mr. Michieletto: in the museum, of course! In the humorous scenes-dialogues, the director, as well all his characters, asks quite serious questions. What does actually deserve to be called a masterpiece and what is the real value of an artwork?