Uploaded May 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Maestro Leon Botstein discusses Giacomo Meyerbeer's Le prophète, this year's SummerScape opera.

SummerScape Opera 2024
Le prophète
Giacomo Meyerbeer
July 26 – August 4

New Production
Sung in French with English supertitles
Libretto by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps
Directed by Christian Räth
American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/le-prophete/

Religion, power, ego, and manipulation collide in composer Giacomo Meyerbeer’s glorious psychodrama.

Shepherded by a trio of sinister Anabaptists, the simple innkeeper Jean de Leyde is persuaded into proclaiming himself king of Münster. Armed with charismatic leadership, Jean mobilizes the masses into a tumultuous religious uprising, denouncing his mother, Fidès, and antagonizing his beloved Berthe along the way.

Director Christian Räth (Die schweigsame Frau, 2022 and Das Wunder der Heliane, 2019) returns for a third SummerScape to lead a visionary new production of a grand opera with colorful vocal passages, inventive orchestrations, and a catastrophic end.