Bizet's The Pearl Fishers: Theater an der Wien

About the Event

Succumb to the exoticism of Bizet's first great opera.

The rage of nineteenth‐century exoticism, which attracted an entire society with its distant, curious, and foreign elements, extended to the realm of opera. In 1863, Bizet was commissioned to write such an opera. The result, The Pearl Fishers, reflects the totality of its experienced librettists' story: a story of strange rituals and beautiful natives. Remarkably, the work also contains the seductive storm of emotions and the breathtaking arias we associate with the operas Bizet set in the Old World.

Opera in three acts (1863)
Music by Georges Bizet
Libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Florentin Carré

In French with German surtitles

Director: Lotte de Beer
Set design: Marouscha Levy
Light design: Alex Brok
Video: Finn Ross
Costume design: Jorine van Beek
Dramaturgy: Peter te Nuyl

Leila: Diana Damrau
Nadir: Dmitry Korchak
Zurga: Nathan Gunn
Nourabad: Nicolas Testé
Orchestra: ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
Chorus: Arnold Schoenberg Choir