OPERA2DAY take Vivaldi – Dangerous Liaisons to Switzerland

Candida Guida (Merteuil) and Maayan Licht (Danceny). Photo by Marco Borggreve

OPERA2DAY & Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn (Switzerland) LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES remake of the successful 2019 Dutch production Vivaldi – Dangerous Liaisons premieres on Thursday, 31st  March in Stadttheater Solothurn followed by a Swiss tour until 14th  June 2022.

OPERA2DAY’s Swiss co-producer Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn (TOBS) will perform a remake of VivaldiDangerous Liaisons, the successful 2019 production of OPERA2DAY and the Netherlands Bach Society, with their own orchestra. The Swiss premiere, titled Les Liaisons Dangereuses, will take place on 31st March in the city of Solothurn, followed by a tour of eighteen performances in eight cities.

The production was originally planned to open in Switzerland as early as spring 2020. But after a week of rehearsals in March 2020, the first lockdown due to COVID-19 was proclaimed. Now, in the spring of 2022, this first international co-production of OPERA2DAY will finally be a fact.

In the opera, Vivaldi’s most thrilling arias are combined in a new libretto. They tell an equally thrilling story, based on Choderlos de Laclos’ epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782): Marquise de Merteuil and Viscount de Valmont play a dangerous game with love. The former lovers outdo each other with sensual cruelties. They challenge each other to seduce others. Their relationship becomes even more dangerous when Valmont really seems to fall for the seductive but chaste Présidente de Tourvel. In the vicious battle that follows, everyone involved eventually perishes. A fatal love story as well as a portrait of an era in which a jaded elite succumbs to its own intrigues.

Serge van Veggel, artistic director of OPERA2DAY, adapted the novel, in which three singers from the original cast participate: Candida Guida (Merteuil), Maayan Licht (Danceny) and Ingeborg Bröcheler (Tourvel). In addition to the six soloists, there are twelve actors on stage, who take on the role of servants. The scenography is once again in the hands of Herbert Janse as are the costumes by Mirjam Pater. Vivaldi’s instrumental fireworks will be performed by Theater Orchestra Biel Solothurn, under the baton of Swiss-Argentine conductor Facundo Agudin. The recitatives by the Italian composer Vanni Moretti, which were newly composed for the original production, forge the work into a unity.