Tragédie lyrique in a prologue and five acts

Libretto by Philippe Quinault

Christophe Rousset and his ensemble Les Talens Lyriques bring a 17th-century “climate opera” to the MusikTheater an der Wien: Proserpine tells how Pluto, god of the underworld, abducted and married her, the daughter of the fertility goddess Ceres, plunging the world into eternal winter as a result. Only once Jupiter intervenes is Proserpine ready to spend one half of the year with her husband and the other half on the earth so that spring can return. Jean-Baptiste Lully’s tragédie en musique, written in 1680, has as its central theme battles between gods that have global consequences. Proserpine marks the start of a new phase in the career of the creator of French Baroque opera in which arias with expressive melodies and ensembles are more prominent than in his earlier works. Christophe Rousset, a close collaborator with the MusikTheater an der Wien for many years, now brings this rarely performed opera to Vienna for the first time.

Concert performance in French with German surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before curtain-up