The Exterminating Angel
2024After last season’s The Dante Project, the Paris Opera continues to explore the music of contemporary composer Thomas Adès with the French premiere of The Exterminating Angel. Inspired by Luis Buñuel’s 1962 surrealist film, which offered a scathing critique of the bourgeoisie, the work begins with a dinner among upper-class friends in a plush mansion after an opera performance. But, gradually, a mysterious force prevents the fifteen guests from leaving the reception. In this confinement for no apparent reason, drawn out over several days, the veneer of propriety cracks, revealing the worst of human nature. Thomas Adès has written a rich and tense score, amplifying the libretto’s strange atmosphere with unusual instruments such as the ondes Martenot. The Paris Opera has entrusted the staging of this huis-clos to Calixto Bieito. The director has long been fascinated by Buñuel’s universe.
Acted in
Jacquelyn Stucker
as Lucia de Nobile
Gloria Tronel
as Leticia Meynar
Hilary Summers
as Leonora Palma
Claudia Boyle
as Silvia de Avila
Christine Rice
as Blanca Delgado
Amina Edris
as Beatriz
Nicky Spence
as Edmundo de Nobile
Frédéric Antoun
as Comte Raul Ybenes
Jarett Ott
as Colonel Alvaro Gomez
Anthony Roth Costanzo
as Francisco de Avila
Filipe Manu
as Eduardo
Philippe Sly
as Senor Russel
Paul Gay
as Alberto Roc
Thomas Adès
as Conductor