Moses in Ägypten

In the organizer's words:

Opera by Gioachino Rossini
Text by Andrea Leone Tottola after the tragedy "L'Osiride" by Francesco Ringhieri
In Italian language with German surtitles

"We live in a dangerous age. Man controls nature before he has learned to control himself."
Albert Schweitzer

At the beginning of his rarely performed opera "Moses in Egypt", Gioachino Rossini uses three colorful orchestral strokes to spread the plague of darkness that has fallen over Egypt. The work depicts the story of the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, who are to be led to freedom by Moses, and interweaves it with the love story of the Egyptian Osiris and the Hebrew Elcia. In order not to lose his beloved, Osiris repeatedly urges the fickle Pharaoh to deny the Hebrew people their freedom. Moses then allows the forces of nature to take hold with divine help, bringing Egypt hail and fire from the sky until he finally parts the Red Sea in order to reach the freedom he longs for. In order to circumvent the ban on secular operas during Lent, Rossini created this work in 1818, which is interspersed with oratorical and sacred elements and is unique in his oeuvre with its unusual sound dramaturgy and formal experiments.