What results is a pacy story about a young woman who fights off assailants, retains the power of her virtue and finally finds her prince.Ĭalibano is beautifully sung by Giorgi Manoshvili as a dopey man-child bitterly feeling the sting of his enslavement. Prospero’s powers and the politics of his kingship are relegated to background. These overpower everyone and Calibano makes off with Miranda. What is backstory in the play - Caliban’s threat to rape Miranda and “people this isle with Calibans” - becomes the focus.Ĭaliban (Calibano here, using the Italian inflection) is given magic petals by his mother Sicorace. Shakespeare’s play is entirely reshaped: the enchanted island and the storm remain but the emphasis shifts from Prospero to the young people. Writer Eugène Scribe, a popular French playwright of the period, is a librettist taking liberties. It is sung in Italian with English surtitles. It premiered in London in 1850 to acclaim but is never revived. Wexford Festival Opera continues its tradition of producing the more neglected full-length operas, and this version of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest by French composer Fromental Halévy meets this criteria neatly.
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