Cecilia Bartoli stars in this ebullient Zurich Opera House production of Rossini’s first French-language comedy opera described by the international press as “pure, unadulterated fun” and reminds us of her comic gifts and her naturalness as a stage actor — as well as her total sympathy with the music of Rossini.

The documentary Hölderlin's Echo approaches the life and work of the well-known poet in an unusual way: In the real film parts, artists are observed and interviewed who interpret the numerous settings of Hölderlin's poems by well-known composers. Animated sequences interpret biographical sections of Hölderlin's moving life in poetic associative form. In the combination of both art forms, a complete work is created that consciously moves away from more conventional forms of geographical chronology and thus also tries to do justice to associative poetry.

This Wagner opera is rarely performed because of the scandals that engulfed the Magdeburg Theatre when it was performed in 1836 under the title The Novice of Palermo, and became known as a cursed opera from which the composer had to distance himself. Wagner's adaptation of the story reflects the rebellious mood of a Revolutionary Germany, vindicating sensual love and attack the fanatical repression of sexuality by a puritanical and hypocritical authority. As the prose says, "Shame to him whose cruel striking/Kills for faults of his own liking!". One of the most extraordinary musicals based on a text by Shakespeare, especially worthy of a new performance as it is four hundred years since the death of the Bard.