Luisa Miller

A drama full of misunderstandings and setbacks, Luisa Miller is a work that is dark and bitter, where tragedy could seem avoidable; the story remains in the viewer's mind long after the performance. Luisa Miller indeed tells a story of terrible waste, the story of a young couple crushed by the weight of traditions and past family history, that the sincerity of their love is not able to overcome.
Through this story of generational conflict, Luisa Miller also illustrates the tragedy of an entire era, torn between terribly outdated feudalism and dreams of freedom inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, the very same youthful ideals that inspired Schiller in the original work. However, when Verdi takes up the torch seventy years later, he applies implacable logic in his version of the failure of this revolution sacrificed on the altar of conservatism, the failed emancipation of the younger generation, perpetual prisoners of their parents' choices. However, to redeem the cruelty of the vice that tightens its grip on the characters, the composer of Rigoletto and later of La Traviata gives us pages and pages of gorgeous lyricism and despair, driving scenes of confrontation and prostration with the same feverish intensity.
This opera is too little known. The oppressive huis-clos comes across in sensational staging in the production by Frédéric Roels, with rare sensitivity to the temporal dissonance that paces this worko full of grace, sadness and regret.

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