Luci mie traditrici

Luci mie traditrici is an opera in two acts by Salvatore Sciarrino, who also wrote the libretto. It was first performed under the German title Die tödliche Blume on 19 May 1998 in the Schlosstheater Schwetzingen at the Schwetzingen Festival. The title is taken from a line in the opera by the countess. The couple's name 'Malaspina' is of an Italian noble family, but it translates as 'evil thorn'. A performance lasts about 1 1/4 hours.

Composition history

Sciarrino started composing the opera in 1996. He based the libretto on the 1590 murder by the composer Carlo Gesualdo of his wife and her lover, but while working on it he discovered that Alfred Schnittke was also composing an opera on the same story. Deleting the references to Gesualdo, Sciarrino turned to a play, Il tradimento per l'onore, by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, and also used an elegy of Claude Le Jeune, based on a text by Pierre de Ronsard. Sciarrino dedicated the opera to Marilisa Pollini, Maurizio Pollini's wife.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast, 19 May 1998 Conductor: Pascal Rophé
La Malaspina	soprano	Sharon Spinetti
Il Malaspina	baritone	Paul Armin Edelmann
L'Ospite	countertenor	Kai Wessel
Un servo della casa	tenor	Georg Nigl
Voce dietro il sipario	countertenor	Kai Wessel

Synopsis

;Act 1
;Act 2

Performance history

Following the Schwetzingen premiere, the opera has been performed at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels and in New York with choreography by Trisha Brown, as well as by the Ensemble Risognanze and at the Salzburg Festival, the Berlin Festival of Contemporary Music, a co-production between the Festival of Contemporary Art in Montepulciano and Oper Frankfurt as well as at the Berlin State Opera.