---

Programme Note

Synopsis:
Based on a romantic fantasy by the 18th-century French writer, Jacques Cazotte, Rodriguez’s opera concerns the devil, in the form of a beautiful woman, who arrives in medieval Provence to work some dangerous mischief. At the betrothal banquet of the son of a local baron, the devil first seduces the son and then tempts the baron to possessive thoughts of his future daughter-in-law. The ineffective son does not resist but the father does and it is his constancy that saves the entire family from tragedy.