Jerusalem Lyric Opera

26th Jul 2025

Review: Jerusalem Lyric Opera Festival 2025

"Erase the random features, and you will see: the world is beautiful. Know where the light is - you will understand where the darkness is."
Marcel Proust

The Jerusalem Lyric Opera Festival ended with 99 percent occupancy and great enthusiasm among our visitors. Music Director Dr. Sofia Mazar created a multifaceted program focusing on the dialectic of good and evil, from Handel to Bartok and a musical highlight, Mozart`s Don Giovanni, directed by Andrei Munteanu and conducted by Patrick Baton with the Israel Chamber Orchestra.
The theme of light and darkness, good and evil, is one of the central themes in art, reflecting the struggle between opposing forces and moral dilemmas. This year we witnessed an interesting interpretation of Handel`s Rinaldo, staged by Daniil Dmitriev and conducted by Ethan Schmeisser with the Israel Chamber Orchestra, which bridged the gap between the 18th and 21st centuries and showed the relevance of this theme to our days.
“I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart everyone who participated, including the dedicated and professional staff of the Jerusalem Festival who worked wonders in the background,” says Sofia Mazar, Musical Director of the Jerusalem Lyric Opera Festival. Special thanks go to our partner and sponsors, whose generous help and support makes the Jerusalem Lyric Opera Festival possible in this form.
ALRO| Italian Cultural Institute, Tel Aviv| Embassy of Hungary in Tel Aviv| Romanian Cultural Institute

28th Mar 2025

G.F.Handel Rinaldo

Handel (1685-1759) arrived in London in 1710 already well-known as a composer of Italian operas, a reputation he had acquired during his stay in Italy. His first opera for the London stage was a three-act opera Rinaldo, written fairly quickly, since Handel recycled music from previous works. On February 24, 1711, the opera was performed for the first time at the Haymarket Theatre. It was an immediate success, following which Handel dominated the London opera scene for the following thirty years or so. The story of the opera is based on episodes from the epic poem Jerusalem Delivered, a fictional account of the first Crusade in 1099 by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544-1595). Historical figures appear in the epic, and subsequently in the opera (for example, Godfrey of Bouillon – Goffredo in the opera, and Tancred), while other characters are Tasso’s invention as is the fantastical part of the story with magicians and sorceresses. The Crusaders are besieging Argante’s forces in Jerusalem, and Rinaldo has been promised that if they are victorious he will marry Goffredo’s daughter Almirena. Armida, a sorceress and queen of Damascus, tells Argante, the Saracen king of Jerusalem, that the only way to achieve victory is to persuade Rinaldo to change sides, and that she has a plan to achieve that. Almirena and Rinaldo love one another, but she is spirited away by Armida. A spirit then lures Rinaldo into a boat on the pretext that Almirena wants him. Now follows a complicated series of events in an enchanted fortress and magic garden with sorcerers, witches, spirits, fantastic machinery, ending in Rinaldo’s rescue. He rejoins his army, and ensures victory in battle. Armida and Argante, reconciled in defeat, renounce magic powers and convert to Christianity. Though the story of the opera is convoluting, and inconceivable to modern audiences, it is the music – Handel’s music -- that dominates, and is remembered till today. It is considered one of the best of Handel’s 40 operas, and after his operas had not been performed for over 200 years Rinaldo has been successfully revived in the 20th and 21st centuries, for example at the Metropolitan in New York in 1984 and at Glyndebourne in 2011. The Lyric Opera of Jerusalem will be performing the opera on July 21, 2025 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Sderot Sha`ul Ha Melech 27, Tel Aviv-Yafo and and on July 22, 2025, at the Gerard Becher Hall, 11 Bezalel St., Jerusalem. Denis Kurson

30th Sep 2024

V.Bellini I Capuleti e I Montecchi

Did you know that Bellini`s opera I Capuleti e I Montecchi is based on a play by the outstanding 16th century Italian writer Matteo Bandello? The plot of two unhappy lovers was known in Italy during the Renaissance. We find the first literary description in a short story by Masuccio dated 1476. Then the story described by the outstanding poet Luigi da Porto in 1524 gains great popularity in Italy, and already in 1532 a play by Matteo Bandello appears, describing the story of two lovers, with many details which we then find in Shakespeare.
In the opera, Romeo and Giulietta already know each other and are in love with each other. But they cannot be together because of the political feud of their families, who are fighting for power in the city. The Capuleti and Monttecchi are embroiled in a real-life historical struggle in Italy between the Guelphs (supporters of the pope) and the Ghibellines (supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor). This approach of the composer also affected the title of the opera, which bears not the names of lovers, but only the names of warring clans.
Despite the political background, Bellini created a stunningly beautiful opera about love, devotion and fidelity.
As an illustration, Salvador Dali`s painting Romeo and Juliet

2nd Sep 2024

Operetta`s Concerts

The Lyric Opera Festival continues its exploration of Emmerich Kalman, Jacques Offenbach, and Johann Strauss. Highlights from "Die Lustige Witwe", "Die Fledermaus`" "La Perichole", "Die Zirkusprinzessin" and others will be played in the current season. Kalmam`s great hit, "Die Zirkusprinzessin", has been announced with two semi-staged performances conducted by Sofia Mazar and supervised by Yulia Fein as stage director.

By the way: the original cast from 1926 included legendary Hubert Marischka who was also director of Stadttheater Wien, Missi Zwerenz, Elsie Altmann, and Fritz Steiner.

7th Jun 2024

G.F.Handel Giulio Cesare in Egitto

Cleopatra dreams of becoming queen of Egypt, but she has to share power with her brother Ptolemy. In hopes of gaining the throne, she is forced to join her enemies and seduce Caesar, who conquered Egypt. Suddenly this feeling develops into love, which can exist despite political intrigues and wars.
Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt), which was first performed in 1724 in London at the King´s Theatre was the most often performed of all of his operas during his lifetime, it was his most successful opera after his death.
The Baroque concept is based on ecstatic anticipation and the discovery of a miracle, the dynamics of contrasting comparisons, the sublime and the earthly, the tragic and the comic; it represented musical drama as a multifaceted, dramatically polyphonic, luxuriously staged performance, replete with stage effects, machinery, costumes, scenery, marked by concert brightness and vocal virtuosity letters. The strengthening of the classicist tendency during the first half of the eighteenth century, based on an attempt to establish a cult of reason requiring “clarity, dignity, and purity,” led to the clarification of the style and composition of the libretto, the crystallization of normative, orderly poetics, modeling musical drama as a mathematically calculated structure. Infinite time was presented in the form of a symmetrically organized closed space. The pathos of Enlightenment classicism was in correcting “rough” nature, including human nature, carried out through the purification of passions. Hence the inevitability of a happy ending, in essence - the achievement of harmony, designed to become an individual experience of the “central” viewer in position - the absolute, which meant an enlightened monarch.
Handel shows the Roman dictator Caesar as an enlightened monarch. He instructs his opponent, the Egyptian tyrant Tolomeo, about how he should deal with his opponents: he reconciles himself with the widow and son of his enemy Pompeo, murdered by Tolomeo, he is generous, decisive, and diplomatic, contemplative, and receptive to art and nature.
At the heart of what turned out to be Handel`s most popular opera are timeless questions about love and revenge.

24th Sep 2023

Homage to Enrico Caruso

"I had always sung as far back as I can remember, for the pure love of it." With this quotation, the Consulate General of Italy in Jerusalem together with the Jerusalem Lyric Opera Festival commemorates the 150th birthday of the legendary Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso.

The name of the great Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso is known all over the world - he had a voice of rare timbre, performed leading roles in more than 80 operas, released about 260 recordings, and was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the first performer in the history of recordings whose record sold a million copies. The concert taking place on October 23 at 20.00 in the YMCA Auditorium.

The entrance is free.