MEDEA
Opera by Luigi Cherubini
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Luigi Cherubini – a famous pedagogue and the most important composer of the era of the French Revolution. Italian by birth, he worked most of his life in France and played an important role in the development of French heroic opera. His most significant works are operas and sacred music. Beethoven considered Cherubini the greatest of his contemporaries. His operas have been praised and interpreted by Rossini, Schumann, Wagner, and Glinka who greatly appreciated his entire oeuvre. Cherubini died at the age of 82 as Director of the Paris Conservatoire. During his lifetime he compiled a catalogue of his works, which was published the year after his death.
Cherubini wrote 21 operas, including 11 seria and 10 comic operas. The most famous of them are "Lodoïska" and "Medea". The former because it was performed 200 times in one season, the latter because of the memorable 1953 production in Florence with the participation of Maria Callas, and her subsequent incarnations. Pier Paolo Pasolini's celebrated film with Callas in the lead role was without Cherubini's music, but it also heightened interest in the opera.
"Medea" is based on the libretto by François-Benoît Hoffmann (a pseudonym of Nicolas Étienne Framéry), based on Euripides' tragedy of Medea and the play of the same name by Pierre Corneille. It is set in the ancient city of Corinth.
The opera premiered on 13 March 1797 in Paris, but French society initially gave the new work a rather cool reception. Later, "Medea" was received considerably more favourably and was often applauded by the French nobility. The opera underwent five versions between 1800 and 1865. The last, the sixth, was at the beginning of the 20th century, when the opera was translated into Italian for its premiere at La Scala in 1909. In this version the spoken dialogue was replaced by recitatives, which were not authorized by the composer. In recent years a number of opera houses have returned to Cherubini's original version.
