The Exterminating Angel

Overview

After last season’s The Dante Project, the Paris Opera continues to explore the music of contemporary composer Thomas Adès with the French premiere of The Exterminating Angel. Inspired by Luis Buñuel’s 1962 surrealist film, which offered a scathing critique of the bourgeoisie, the work begins with a dinner among upper-class friends in a plush mansion after an opera performance. But, gradually, a mysterious force prevents the fifteen guests from leaving the reception. In this confinement for no apparent reason, drawn out over several days, the veneer of propriety cracks, revealing the worst of human nature. Thomas Adès has written a rich and tense score, amplifying the libretto’s strange atmosphere with unusual instruments such as the ondes Martenot. The Paris Opera has entrusted the staging of this huis-clos to Calixto Bieito. The director has long been fascinated by Buñuel’s universe.

Cast

Jacquelyn Stucker

Lucia de Nobile

Gloria Tronel

Leticia Meynar

Hilary Summers

Leonora Palma

Claudia Boyle

Silvia de Avila

Christine Rice

Blanca Delgado

Amina Edris

Beatriz

Nicky Spence

Edmundo de Nobile

Frédéric Antoun

Comte Raul Ybenes

Jarett Ott

Colonel Alvaro Gomez

Anthony Roth Costanzo

Francisco de Avila