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The work is adapted from a novel written in French by Jean Potocki (1761-1815), a Polish aristocrat with revolutionary sympathies who was also an intrepid traveller and man of the Enlightenment. The libretto and musical distribution of the opera reflect the original complex episodic format and mixed genres.
The hero, Alphonse van Worden, travels around Spain on an eventful journey, experiencing all sorts of tests and initiations, encountering fantastic or comic situations and many colourful characters. A dizzying series of confrontations, imprisonments, seduction scenes and mystical quests draws spectators into a whirlwind universe where the border between truth and lies, the real and the theatrical, are blurred.
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