SYNOPSIS
A typical piazza in Venice, on it a pharmacy. Like all tutors the old apothecary Sempronio has set his mind to marrying his young and attractive pupil Grilletta. But she is courted as well by two other suitors: the poor Mengone, who only works for the apothecary to be near her, and the rich and selfconscious dandy Volpino. In accordance with the genre there is a fine lieto, a happy ending. Mengone gets Grilletta. Or to put it more accurately: Grilletta gets the man she wants, Mengone. This little treasure, one of Haydn’s 16 Italian opera’s, is rarely performed.

ARTISTIC CONCEPT
In this production by Eva Buchmann, director, and Jan their goal: the audience close to the singers/performers Willem de Vriend, musical director, we leave Venice. The action takes place ‘on the road’. The pharmacy literally has become ambulant. It is built-in into a Fiat 500. The cinque cento - the world famous fifties icon of the Italian car industry. This triumphant car is a perfect vehicle in the hands of the director to enhance the comic effect of the eternal fight of several men over one woman.

Jan Willem de Vriend is a great expert in 18th century music and opera performance practice. Since Haydn’s work is not complete, he has revised it by adding a selection of surprising music from Haydn and his time.

In their longstanding collaboration Buchmann and De Vriend have developed an opera style that enthusiastically involves the audience. They know how to create an intelligent interaction between the singers/performers and the musicians, which in turn invites the audience to freely react to or ‘interact’ with the performance. That is why they not only work in the traditional venues with a proscenium stage, but also site specific, in a hotel or church or in the open, all fresco. Wherever they perform their show they adapt the set in such a way that they realise their goal: the audience close to the singers/performers and musicians, sharing the same space, in which one freely switches from the most intense concentration to sharing a drink, as the action unfolds. This intimacy is essential in their work and it requires great performance qualities from the singers. Their closeness to the spectators does not allow anything but authenticity.

The informal atmosphere, thus created, most certainly resembles the 18th century performance practice more than the practice of most big opera houses today. But there is a big difference as well: a spectator of today is not addressed well when the performers’ histrionic capacity consists of stylistic gestures alone, as in the time of Esterhazy and Haydn. The audience has internalised Freud and all the psychological insights of last century. Spectators today can only experience authenticity in a stage character when it has the complexity, the inner contradictions, that they experience in themselves and in others every day. Eva Buchmann has the way with singers to become authentic in this more complex approach. At the same time she never loses her sense of entertainment.