This year the festival will be staged in the courtyard of the Knights’ Halls, a fine natural backdrop to the Israel Opera’s cross-cultural production of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFOpera night at Acre Fortress(photo credit: YOSSI ZWECKER)
If atmosphere by the ton is your thing, then you might want to attend the third Acre Opera Festival, taking place at the Acre Crusader fortress from July 28 through 30.This year the festival will be staged in the courtyard of the Knights’ Halls, a fine natural backdrop to the Israel Opera’s cross-cultural production of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio directed by Shirit Weiss with the Israel Camerata conducted by Daniel Cohen. The singers will sing in German, but the dialogues are in Hebrew. Arab actor George Iskandar makes his IO debut as the Pasha Selim.Belmonte (Nathan Haller) and his servant Pedrillo (Eitan Drori) have come to rescue their fiancées, captured by pirates and sold to Selim, who has fallen hard for Constanze (Ganya Ben Gur Axelrod), but she remains loyal to Belmonte, as does her servant, Blonde (Yael Levita), to Pedrillo. Of course, all ends happily with the jealous Osmin (Gustav Andreassen) thwarted, the lovers reunited and praising Selim’s noble soul. Abduction premiered in 1782 with Mozart conducting, and was a huge hit.One can also enjoy Latino Ladino (July 29), a medley of sacred and secular music from the Ladino canon and the Spanich baroque starring countertenor Yaniv Deor and soprano Hila Baggio, and for the whole family there’s the saucy, colorful hour-long IO adaptation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, with three performances on July 30.For more info and tickets visit www.ozrothagalil.org.il.