Les pêcheurs de perles

In the organizer's words:

Against the backdrop of a distant island paradise, Georges Bizet depicts a love triangle complicated by true friendship: once before, the love of the Brahmin Leïla threatened to divide the longtime friends Zurga and Nadir. Although both men have sworn to each other to renounce the beautiful young woman, neither this promise nor Leïla's vow of chastity can prevent her and Nadir from being overcome by desire for each other when they meet again. When the couple is caught by the head priest, Zurga, as leader of the pearl fishing village, is to pass the death sentence on the two perjurers. Torn between friendship and jealousy, desire for revenge and sense of duty, Zurga begins to waver ... Twelve years before the worldwide success of his "Carmen", the 25-year-old Bizet achieved his breakthrough as an opera composer with his "Pearl Fishers". The material, infused with the exoticism so popular at the time, inspired him to write a score with colorful instrumentation, enchanting melodies and effective theatrical music that unfolds in large-scale choral tableaux as well as in the chamber-play-like scenes between the protagonists. The dramatic as well as musical pivotal point here is the famous duet "Au fond du temple saint" by Zurga and Nadir - a pearl of opera literature, to which ultimately even the rediscovery of the opera, still rarely performed today, is owed. This content has been machine translated.