The Semperoper Dresden is set to premiere Rolando Villazón’s production of “La Sonnambula” on March 19, 2023.

The opera, which will be conducted by Evelino Pidò, will star Emily Pogorelc, Maxim Mironov, Rosalia Cid, Georg Zeppenfeld, and Nicole Chirka.

“In the current production, Villazón reveals the resentments lurking behind picturesque facades in a self-contained rustic rural village community, whose entrenched conservatism leads to superstition and repression: the eerily beautiful love story about the somnambulistic Amina and her jealous Elvino hides the urge for freedom of a woman oppressed by conventions fun-loving woman in a restrictive world,” the company noted in a press statement, also revealing that Villazón has further developed the staging for the Dresden premiere.

Villazon’s “La Sonnambula” was co-produced by the Semperoper Dresden with the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Opéra de Nice Côte d’Azur, and the Metropolitan Opera; however, the Met premiere was postponed due to budget cuts (the Dresden press statement asserts that the New York premiere was set for November 2023); OperaWire was informed that the production will head to the Met in 2025.