Victor Sicard

The Enchanted Palace

To save his protegé from a fatal destiny, a magician has imprisoned knights and ladies in an enchanted labyrinthine palace and mystifies them to the point of delirium. Luigi Rossi's first opera - boasting sixteen soloists, double and triple choirs for 6 and 12 voices, numerous ballets - marked the last surge of Roman opera before the Eternal City forsook it for a long time. For the Argentine conductor Leonardo García Alarcón, who rediscovered the opera in the Vatican Library neglected for 380 years, Il palazzo incantato is ‘the missing link in the history of opera and the metaphor of our lives'. ‘Leonardo Garcia Alarcon was known as a magician, now he has become a conjurer.’ (Le Monde)