La chute de la maison Usher

Teatro di San Carlo, Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, Italy

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8 PM

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US$ 85

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Important Info

Type: Opera

City: Naples, Italy

Starts at: 20:00

Duration: 1h

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

Can I choose my seats?

Cast

Performers

Orchestra: Orchestra of the Teatro di San Carlo

Conductor: Marco Angius

Soprano: Elisa Balbo (Lady Madeline)

Baritone: Francesco Salvadori (Roderick Usher)

Tenor: Leonardo Cortellazzi (The doctor)

Bass-Baritone: Paul Gay (Roderick's friend)

Creators

Composer: Claude Debussy

Writer: Edgar Allan Poe

Director: Luca Micheletti

Overview

Claude Debussy’s La Chute de la Maison Usher comes to Teatro di San Carlo in a new production, offering audiences the rare opportunity to experience one of the composer’s most fascinating and least frequently performed works. Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, Debussy’s unfinished opera reveals a strikingly original musical language, blending impressionistic colour with psychological drama to create an atmosphere of haunting beauty and suspense.

Created as a new production for Teatro di San Carlo, this staging brings fresh theatrical life to Debussy's extraordinary unfinished masterpiece.

The story unfolds within the crumbling Usher mansion, where Roderick Usher and his sister Madeline live in growing isolation, haunted by illness, fear, and the weight of a family curse. As an old friend arrives at the house, the boundary between reality and nightmare begins to dissolve. Rather than relying on conventional dramatic action, the opera explores the inner lives of its characters, creating a compelling portrait of obsession, loneliness, and inevitable decline.

Debussy’s refined orchestral writing and expressive vocal lines evoke an unsettling world filled with mystery and emotional complexity. Every musical detail contributes to the opera's dreamlike atmosphere, revealing the composer's unique ability to translate psychological tension into sound while anticipating many of the innovations of twentieth-century opera.

Orchestration and completion by Alessandro Solbiati of the unfinished opera by Claude Debussy

New production of the Teatro di San Carlo

History

La chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) is an unfinished opera in one act (divided into two scenes) by Claude Debussy to his own libretto, based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". The composer worked on the score between 1908 and 1917 but it was never completed.

Synopsis

Roderick Usher is the last male descendant of his family. He lives in his crumbling ancestral home with his twin sister, Lady Madeline, who is afflicted by a wasting disease, and her doctor. Roderick's friend (the narrator in Poe's tale) has been summoned to the house. During his visit, Lady Madeline is found dead and is buried in a vault under the house. The friend reads Roderick a tale from a medieval romance in order to comfort him as a storm rages outside. As the friend reads the climax of the tale, Lady Madeline appears covered in blood. She had been buried alive and now turns on her brother, dragging him to his death. The House of Usher collapses as the friend makes his escape under a blood-red moon. Debussy follows Poe's tale but places more emphasis on Roderick's incestuous feelings for his sister and makes the doctor into a more prominent, more sinister character, who is also Roderick's rival for Madeline's affection.

Venue Info

Teatro di San Carlo - Naples
Via San Carlo, 98

The Teatro Reale di San Carlo (Royal Theatre of Saint Charles), as originally named by the Bourbon monarchy but today known simply as the Teatro di San Carlo, is an opera house in Naples, Italy, connected to the Royal Palace and adjacent to the Piazza del Plebiscito. It is the oldest continuously active venue for opera in the world, having opened in 1737, decades before either Milan's La Scala or Venice's La Fenice. The opera season runs from late January to May, with the ballet season taking place from April to early June. The house once had a seating capacity of 3,285, but has now been reduced to 1,386 seats. Given its size, structure and antiquity, it was the model for theatres that were later built in Europe.

Important Info

Type: Opera

City: Naples, Italy

Starts at: 20:00

Duration: 1h

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