Panning through the current Covid Klondike of online opera offerings brings prospectors the occasional nugget. Among – it must be said – an overabundance of well-intentioned spoil. No more tenors in front of the Zoom shaving mirror, please. Mute!
The Enchanted Palace by Luigi Rossi, produced by Opéra de Dijon, is no run of the mill nugget. It is not even just a flashing musical meteor, opportunely picked up from some remote community hall performance in Winchcombe. It is a whacking great, golden asteroid of an opera, whooshing in from the distant, dark, forgotten Baroque Belt, way beyond the orbits of the familiar repertoire. It did not land by chance with Opéra de Dijon, specialists in panning for rare objects since their eight-classic-columned Grand Théâtre opera house was built in 1827.
