L’Amour de Loin is a variation on a popular medieval legend. The hero of the opera, Jaufré Rudel, was a real historical figure, while it is not exactly certain whether he traveled to Libya to meet his beloved. Jaufré is considered one of the first Provencal troubadours, poets and performers of songs dedicated to the ideal and distant Lady.
According to one researcher, the lyric poetry of the troubadours ‘is not focused on achieving a goal, but on an experience that alone can bring the highest joy to a lover’. This is exactly what can be said about the opera and its listener. L’Amour de Loin does not involve action as such, dramatic clashes and unexpected perturbations. This is an opera of expectation, an opera of slow running time. One state and one thought unwind to infinity. There are only three characters on the stage, and the fourth and main one is the Mediterranean Sea, which separates the lovers — it floods the stage in powerful orchestral interludes with a choir singing without words.
Man and Elements, East and West, impossible love and death — librettist Amin Maalouf and composer Kaija Saariaho address all the main themes that the opera house has been developing over the prior four hundred years. L’Amour de Loin was first performed in 2000. Since then it has gone through a dozen productions and now is performed in Russia for the first time. The Ural Opera continues to acquaint domestic audiences with significant works of the 20th century — this collection already includes Satyagraha, The Passenger, Greek Passions and Three Sisters.
Sheet music provided by Wise Music Classical.
Event (modernity)
Musical director (Konstantin Chudovsky)