Together with our friends of the festival – Pažaislis Music Festival – we invite you to a concert performance of J. Massenet's opera Thérèse with the best Lithuanian soloists Justina Gringytė, Edgaras Montvidas and others, With LNOBT‘s symphony orchestra and men's choir, we will see maestro Ričardas Šumilas at the conductor's podium. This opera, intriguing with its plot and wonderful music, will be performed in Lithuania for the first time. Thérèse is one of J. Massenet's last operas and one of those for which contemporaries called the composer "the poet of a woman's soul". Although it was not among the most popular operas of J. Massenet, its wonderful music and the vocal parts that required skill from the performers did not make this work forgettable.
The action of the opera takes place during the French Revolution. Thérèse, the wife of the revolutionary Girondist André, hides from her husband an affair with his friend, the royalist Marquis Armand. Armand, avoiding the wrath of the revolutionaries, wants to escape from the country, André takes care of this by giving him temporary shelter in his house. Unfortunately, after the guillotining of King Louis XVI, the Girondists find themselves in the throes of the revolution. When the riots break out, André joins the other Girondists, leaving Teresa and Armand at home. Thérèse persuades Armand to run, promising to join him later. Seeing the arrested André from the window, she shouts "Long live the king!" to the crowd. An enraged mob bursts into the house and arrests Thérèse. She finds herself next to her husband being led to the scaffold.
