presque Alcina

If you come across an island, in the middle of a forest, a laundromat, do not bring your laundry there. You are on the island of the witch Alcina and these machines contain the men she seduced and turned into a pig! It is therefore suspicious that Bradamante, accompanied by her faithful friend Melissa, ends up on the shore of the powerful magician, with the firm intention to free his bewitched lover: Ruggiero. Opera is well known. The myth is similar to that of Circe: the indomitable and dangerous woman, responsible for the misfortune of heroes. But what if these stories were distorted by the male gaze? And if the reality was more complex?

almost Alcina takes the side of the feminist rewriting of Haendel’s Alcina: Ruggiero is no longer a poor man without will, victim tossed in all directions; Bradamante is no longer obliged to disguise herself as a man to save her fiancé ; and Alcina is no longer a cruel witch with a thirst for power but a woman with a terribly banal secret.

Six lyric singers and seven instrumentalists present Handel’s opera Alcina from a different angle. The tragic, magic, love and music remain, but the balance is restored.