Orlando

The vertigo of love

Does love drive us mad? Handel finds the answer to this question in Ariosto's Orlando furioso (Furious Roland), an absolute masterpiece of adventure storytelling, which he reduces to a few characters, magnifying their heroic and virtuous qualities. The complexity of the love story, comparable to that of Japanese origami, is rendered with astonishing clarity by the music. At the heart of the story are two lovers, the beautiful Angelica, Queen of Cathay, and the African prince Medoro – courted respectively by Orlando, a noble knight, and Dorinda, an innocent shepherdess. 

Director Jeanne Desoubeaux has chosen to transpose the opera into a museum, where a group of child visitors witness fantastical scenes as the characters in the paintings come to life and battle between desire and duty, ambition and jealousy. The romantic tension momentarily drives Orlando mad, just before the mysterious magician-philosopher Zoroastro intervenes to urge him to instead pursue military glory, thereby challenging our modern gender stereotypes...

‘Let me fight
monsters and bulls,
But do not touch
my heart.’

A film and a book to delve deeper:

• Serenade for Three (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933): Although set in the 20th century, Lubitsch's film captures the spirit of baroque love with its sophistication, highly elaborate dialogues and plots full of twists and turns.
• Orlando (Virginia Woolf): A cult novel on identity and metamorphosis, spanning centuries and genres – a perfect contemporary echo of the lyrical folly of the baroque Orlando. (Folio classique)