Hotel Metamorphosis - Hotel Metamorph...

The 2025 Salzburg Whitsun Festival will focus on the city of Venice. To mark the occasion, Cecilia Bartoli (artistic director of the Festival since 2012) has asked director Barrie Kosky to imagine a pasticcio that echoes the history of the city of the Doges - a pastiche in which works are based more or less faithfully on the music of other composers, either as a game or as a tribute, and help to bring them to life.

Barrie Kosky has taken up the pastiche game, which was in vogue in 17th and 18th century Venice, by combining texts from Ovid's Metamorphoses and setting them to the virtuoso music of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi (from arias to symphonic movements or concertos). As part of the festival, this historical re-composition, which constitutes a new work of music theatre, is entitled Hotel Metamorphosis.

Barrie Kosky's intention is to create a new work in which text and music resonate and reflect each other. According to the director, Metamorphosis is no longer just a 'transformation', but the illustration of 'a complete spectrum, a panopticon of human emotions, (...) bringing together virtually all human emotions: rage, revenge, joy, obsessions...'. And while audiences are familiar with most of Vivaldi's great music, the experience of Hotel Metamorphosis should offer a new reading of it by putting Ovid's texts into perspective.

Hotel Metamorphosis will be premiered at the Haus für Mozart in Salzburg in June 2025 under the direction of Barrie Kosky. The production features Cecilia Bartoli (in the roles of Arachne / Eurydice), Varduhi Abrahamyan (Minerva / Nutricen), Lea Desandre (Echo / Statua / Myrrha), Philippe Jaroussky (Narcissus / Pygmalion) and Angela Winkler (Orpheus).