Cardillac

About the Event

A beloved jeweller turns to crime out of love for his creations.

"Cardillac", written in 1926, the first of Hindemith’s trilogy of operas about the relationship between the artist and society. The others being “Mathis der Maler” (1935) and “Die Harmonie der Welt” (1957). It includes some of the composer’s most engaging music, conveying the opera’s power, strange beauty, and eccentricity sometimes leading to absurdity. “Cardillac” was one of the most frequently performed operas of the 1920s and went on to become Hindemith’s most successful stage work of all.

The protagonist is the goldsmith Cardillac, who fabricates wonderful things and because of his obsession with them he also retrieves them by theft and murder. The plot revolves around the dilemma of revealing to the public that the beloved artist is also the criminal who made an entire city fearful. The citizens and police fail to make any connection between the coincidence of the purchases and murders until Cardillac finally confesses. A crowd then beats him to death, but after his daughter explains that the murders were merely the consequence of his love of beauty, they sing a ravishing eulogy.


Conductors: Vello Pähn, Risto Joost, Lauri Sirp
Stage Director: Vilppu Kiljunen (Finland)
Designer: Kimmo Viskari (Finland)