Rossini: Il Turco in Italia

Combine the adventurous spirit of the Aix-en-Provence festival with the theatrical flair of British stage director Christopher Alden. Then unleash them on Rossini's most knowing opera buffa – a culture-clash farce with a big heart and a metatextual twist – and you have a staging of Il Turco in Italia that's as intelligent as it is entertaining. Marc Minkowski conducts Les Musiciens de Louvre, and the period instruments bring a special freshness and zest to one of Rossini's most original scores. Olga Peretyatko and Adrian Sâmpetrean (as the Ottoman pasha Selim) head a superbly chosen and thoroughly engaging cast.