Rivale

The fight between Tancredi and Clorinda is one of the hardest scenes in Jerusalem Delivered. The crusader and the Muslim princess fall in love on the battlefield, but decide to fight till death: in the clash between cultures and religions, honor proves stronger than feeling. This scene becomes the center of the libretto of Tancréde, written in 1701 by Antoine Danchet for André Campra’s opera. In 2016, Lucia Ronchetti, one of the most important Italian living composers, condenses the text to compose the chamber opera Rivale: a monodrama for soprano, cello, brass ensemble and metal percussions. The inner contrast of the female character suggested the director Giulio Boato to make an oneiric filmic work, in which the protagonist HsiaoPei Ku splits into multiple entities, as a prisoner of a matryoshka of dreams. After debuting at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin in 2017, and the first Italian performance at the Sagra Malatestiana in Rimini in 2019, Rivale becomes a cinematographic work based on the musical score to create a vortex of sensations and emotions poised between music, theater and cinema.