CARDILLAC

Conductors Vello Pähn, Risto Joost, Lauri Sirp

Stage Director Vilppu Kiljunen

Set and Costume Designer Kimmo Viskari

Lighting Designer Anton Kulagin

The protagonist is a goldsmith Cardillac, who fabricates wonderful things and because of his obsession with them he also retrieves them by theft and murder. The plot revolves around the dilemma of revealing to the public that the beloved artist is also the criminal who made an entire city fearful…

Cardillac, written in 1926, is the first of Hindemith’s trilogy of operas about the relationship between the artist and society, the others being Mathis der Maler (1935) and Die Harmonie der Welt (1957). It includes some of the composer’s most engaging music, conveying the opera’s power, strange beauty, and eccentricity sometimes leading to absurdity. Cardillac was one of the most frequently performed operas of the 1920s and went on to become Hindemith’s most successful stage work of all.