Fantasized visions and identity transformations fill Prokofiev’s opera, conducted by Dmitry Matvienko in Vienna, from 26 March to 9 April

«I wanted to emphasize the surreal aspect of Betrothal in a Monastery. It’s a comic opera that tells of the protagonist’s journey into a fantasy world; and we try to make it all the more effective by changing the spatial dimensions, playing with transforming costumes and identities, and by creating visions that bring the story to an imaginative level». This is how Damiano Michieletto describes his new production of Sergej Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery, running at the MusikTheater an der Wien, in the capital of Austria, from Wednesday 26 March until 9 April.

The Italian director will be returning to the Viennese theatre for the fifth time in his career, a theatre where he has staged Puccini’s Triptych in 2012, Mozart’s Idomeneo in 2013, Rossini’s Otello in 2016, and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2018. Also in Vienna, but in this case at the Staatsoper, in 2024 Michieletto successfully produced Alexander Raskatov’s Animal Farm, from George Orwell’s novel by the same title.

Next to him on this production are Paolo Fantin working on the sets, Klaus Bruns designing the costumes, Alessandro Carletti creating the light designs, Erika Rombaldoni preparing the choreographies, and Kai Weßler working on the dramaturgy. Dmitry Matvienko conducts the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, and the Arnold Schoenberg Chor prepared by Erwin Ortner. 

Protagonists on stage are Evgeny Akimov (Don Jerome), Petr Sokolov (Don Ferdinand), Stacey Alleaume (Luiza), Elena Maximova (the Governess), Vladimir Dmitruk (Don Antonio), Anna Goryachova (Clara), Valery Gilmanov (Mendoza), Zoltan Nagy (Don Carlos), Sorin Coliban (Father Augustin), Iurie Ciobanu (Father Elixir), David Babayants (Father Chartreuse), Mischa Schelomianski (Father Benedictine), and Valentino Blasina (Lopez). 

A lyrical-comic opera in four acts and nine scenes, Betrothal in a Monastery was written on a libretto by Prokofiev himself and his wife Mira Mendelson, after Richard Brinsley’s comedy The Duenna, which had already been the subject of a successful eighteenth-century ballad-opera by Thomas Linley. Completed in 1940 during Stalinist terror, it was performed only privately in 1941 at the Stanislavskij Theatre in Moscow. The war halted the production and the premiere, which took place only in 1946 – following a review of the score in 1943 – at the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad. Set in Seville in the eighteenth century, the story unfolds around a series of amorous intrigues, typical of the period’s comic tradition, to which Prokofiev added a strong lyrical element.

Photo credits: Verlobung © Werner Kmetitsch