Nabucco

After his victory over the Hebrews, Nabucco, King of Babylon, takes them into captivity. Meanwhile, his daughter Fenena, a captive of the Hebrews, has turned her back on her father and thrown in her lot with her lover Ishmaele, nephew of the king of Jerusalem. Abigaille, Nabucco’s second daughter, on the other hand, craves power. When she learns that she is not Nabucco’s biological daughter, she decides to get her sister out of the way. When Nabucco finally declares himself a god and loses his mind, she seizes her chance: she tricks her father into imposing the death penalty on all Hebrews – including his biological daughter. Fearing for her life, Nabucco regains his sanity and sets the Hebrew people free.

The story of NABUCCO has its roots in the Bible. It is said to have been King Nebuchadnezzar II who lost his mind after defeating the Hebrews and finally found himself again through God. With this work, Giuseppe Verdi achieved an overnight breakthrough in 1842. The Milan audience identified, it is said, with the Hebrew people, as Milan was under Austrian rule at the time of the premiere in 1842. The choral number Va, pensiero from Act Three of the opera – most widely known today as the »Prisoners’ Chorus« –  was seen as a hymn to freedom. Verdi therefore owed his success in no small part to the political potential of the opera.

Imprisonment and power are the central themes in this production by Roland Schwab (OBERST CHABERT, ERNANI). The prison serves not only as a backdrop, but also as a metaphor. In the struggle for power, violence philosophically speaking becomes a prison from which no one can escape.