Strange and wonderful. Convincing, because performed with such conviction. Costumes, staging and lighting are all so good, hieratic movements going so well with the slow intensity of Lully's declamatory setting. [Cybele has contrived to make Atys kill first the mortal woman he loves, and then himself. Now she repents, and transforms him into the pine tree. The production takes Louis XIV's favourite opera back beyond Ovid towards the originatory myth of the Mother Goddess and her castrated priest, who dies and lives again, being a vegetation deity. Bridelli seems able to channel all this myth material and make it live.]
Strange and wonderful. Convincing, because performed with such conviction. Costumes, staging and lighting are all so good, hieratic movements going so well with the slow intensity of Lully's declamatory setting. [Cybele has contrived to make Atys kill first the mortal woman he loves, and then himself. Now she repents, and transforms him into the pine tree. The production takes Louis XIV's favourite opera back beyond Ovid towards the originatory myth of the Mother Goddess and her castrated priest, who dies and lives again, being a vegetation deity. Bridelli seems able to channel all this myth material and make it live.]