Festival Summer in Aix-en-Provence

Following a concert tour with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen at the beginning of the season, the internationally acclaimed Swiss tenor Mauro Peter returns this summer to one of his defining roles: Tamino in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Long regarded as one of the leading Mozart interpreters of his generation, Peter has previously sung the role at the Paris Opéra, the Salzburg Festival, and the Semperoper Dresden, among others. At the Aix-en-Provence Festival, he will portray the young prince in a new production.

Mozart’s perhaps most personal work—whose extraordinary success the composer was able to witness during his lifetime—stands at the centre of a new, conceptually rich production. The Magic Flute unfolds here as an aesthetic and spiritual Gesamtkunstwerk, poised between fairy tale, initiation ritual and social utopia. Its apparent simplicity and its diversity of musical expression continue to make it a universal masterpiece.

In his interpretation, director Clément Cogitore takes a critical look at the idea of the ideal community and its darker undercurrents. Drawing on the “sensitive archives of our collective memory,” the production follows the coming-of-age journey of young people growing up in a world of fragile beauty and uncertain truths. The path from night to light is not presented as a given, but rather as an ambivalent process marked by rupture and tension.

Musically, the production is led by Leonardo García-Alarcón, who, together with Cappella Mediterranea, will be performing a work by the Festival’s “flagship composer” Mozart for the first time. A distinguished cast promises a performance that does justice to the work’s magic, depth and enduring relevance.

With his return as Tamino, Mauro Peter integrates seamlessly into this new interpretation—as a lyrical hero poised between idealism, doubt and hope.

Cast:

Ying Fang, Pamina
Mauro Peter, Tamino
Sabine Devieilhe, Königin der Nacht
Sean Michael Plumb, Papageno
Brindley Sherratt, Sarastro

Chœur de Chambre de Namur
Knabenchor der Chorakademie Dortmund
Cappella Mediterranea

Leonardo García-Alarcón, conductor
Clément Cogitore, stage director and video