Luigi Cherubini
Medea

Stage Director Set/Costume Designer Conductor Producer Lighting Design Adaptation

About

Adapatation of Luigi Cherubini's 1797 French language opera Médée for seven 7 singers by Andreas Mitisek, translated into English by Suzan Hanson. The production was  performed in an abandoned furniture warehouse, the EXPO Building with the audience in 360 degree seating.

Andreas Mitisek has rethought the work. He based his version on the original French “Médée,” leaving in some of the original dialogue, but also adding bits of Euripides’ “Medea” and Pierre Corneille’s 1635 play “Médée.” With chorus, grandeur and longueurs removed, a three-hour three-act opera is fused into a non-stop 95-minute horror show. Mitisek conducts, but is responsible for staging, set and lighting as well.

The audience surrounds the platform, with the orchestra set off in a far corner. All the characters remain on the stage throughout the show, curling up into little balls when not needed.–– Mark Swed, LA Times

Reviews

...a radicalized version of Luigi Cherubini’s “Medea”. The setting is an indistinct postmodern time zone. Jason, in a white dinner jacket and loose tie leaves Medea for Dirce, a Paris Hilton-like party girl -- the daughter of a creepy Creon, king of Corinth. Medea is a sorceress, one arm snaked with sinuous tattoos, in a modern gown.

The production begins with an excerpt from Euripides as prologue before the overture. And Mitisek had the brilliant stroke to use the orchestral introduction of Act 3 as background music for a vivid description of Medea’s exploits of destruction taken from Corneille and devastatingly declaimed by Southwell (her eyes penetrating like lasers) and Dirce’s two serving maids (Ariel Pisturino and Diana Tash).

Mitisek conducted his fine small orchestra with exactly the right combination of classical discipline and dramatic fire.

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Long Beach Opera 2011