Die Verlobung im Kloster

Linke Wienzeile 6

1060 Wien

 

Lyrical-comic opera in four acts

Libretto by Sergei Prokofiev and Mira Mendelssohn

 

A monastery, of all places, is the setting for a three-way wedding: the young Luisa was actually supposed to marry the rich fishmonger Mendoza, but she loves the attractive and penniless Antonio. Her old nurse, Duenna, has long had her eye on the fishmonger and is only too happy to swap clothes and roles with young Luisa. Her brother Ferdinand, in turn, loves the rich Clara, who decided to go to a monastery after an argument. So begins a turbulent game of mix-ups in which not only the monks of the monastery, who are always drunk, lose track of who actually wants to marry whom - and yet in the end they give the blessing to the three couples. Sergei Prokofiev's The Betrothal in the Monastery is based on an 18th century English comedy. In the middle of a time of fear and violence, between Stalinist terror and war, Prokofiev wrote this lyrical-comic opera, which does not fit at all with the state's guidelines for proletarian art and patriotic propaganda. Instead, Prokofiev's Obrutscheniye w monastyre presents, with a lot of humor and charm, people who, with their timeless desires and weaknesses, could come straight from the Commedia dell'Arte. Damiano Michieletto, who celebrated many successes at the Theater an der Wien, stages this turbulent comedy of confusion about the fish trade and carnal desires.

 

In Russian with German and English surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before the start of the performance

 

(Source: theater-wien.at)