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Aired Friday May 18th, 2012 at 8:00 pm on KUED HD Ch. 7.1

World Premiere Production of 'The Enchanted Island" on Great Performances at the Met

William Christie conducts the work, which uses arias by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others to tell a new story featuring characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream



The Enchanted Island, a world premiere work that combines Baroque music with a new, English-language libretto featuring characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a starry cast including Danielle de Niese, Joyce DiDonato, David Daniels, Plácido Domingo, and Luca Pisaroni, airs on KUED’s Great Performances at the Met Friday, May 18 at 8 p.m. on KUED.


The New York Times dubbed the work, “fanciful, clever, and touching,” while Associated Press found it “irresistibly entertaining…with enough fizz to send a dozen champagne corks popping.”

Devised and written by the acclaimed British theater artist Jeremy Sams in his Met debut, The Enchanted Island is conducted by renowned Baroque specialist William Christie and seen in a fantastical production by director Phelim McDermott and scenic designer Julian Crouch that blends 18th-century theatrical techniques with advanced video projection designs.


The Enchanted Island is a contemporary take on the 18th-century tradition of operatic “pasticcios” (pastiches), in which new librettos were combined with music from various compositions to create entirely new theatrical pieces. The tradition was particularly popular in London, where Handel was a prominent practitioner. The score for The Enchanted Island comprises selections from a variety of Baroque operas, cantatas, and oratorios, many of which are rarely performed in contemporary opera houses.

The score includes music from many Handel works, including operas (e.g. Alcina, Ariodante, Partenope, and Semele, Tamerlano, and Teseo); oratorios (Hercules and Judas Maccabaeus); and cantatas (e.g. “Tanti strali al sen mi scocchi” and “Notte placida e cheta”); and more. The other works represented in The Enchanted Island are by Vivaldi, Rameau, Ferrandini, Campra, Purcell, Rebel, and Leclair.

Sams, a noted stage director, writer, translator, composer, and lyricist, has created an English-language libretto for The Enchanted Island that combines the plots of two Shakespeare plays. In Sams’s story, the bitter supernatural war between The Tempest’s Prospero and his nemesis, the sorceress Sycorax, is interrupted by a quartet of unexpected island visitors: the four lovers from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, whose honeymoon cruise has ended in a shipwreck. The ensuing conflicts and romantic entanglements also involve Prospero’s daughter Miranda, Sycorax’s grotesque son Caliban, the shipwrecked prince Ferdinand, the air spirit Ariel, and Neptune, king of the undersea world.

DiDonato stars as the sorceress Sycorax and Daniels is her supernatural foe, the sorcerer Prospero; Domingo is Neptune, god of the seas; de Niese is the air spirit Ariel; Lisette Oropesa is Prospero’s daughter Miranda; Anthony Roth Costanzo is the shipwrecked prince Ferdinand; and Pisaroni is Sycorax’s monstrous son Caliban.

The four Midsummer lovers are sung by Layla Claire (Hermia), Elizabeth DeShong (Helena), Paul Appleby (Demetrius), and Elliot Madore (Lysander, in his Met debut).

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Dolores Doré Eccles Broadcast Center (EBC), The University of Utah, 101 S. Wasatch Dr., Salt Lake City, UT 84112, 801-581-7777 
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