Italian directs classic at Paris Opera

(ANSA) - Milan, September 26 - After the success of the Barber of Seville in 2014, Italian director Damiano Michieletto is returning to the Paris Opera on October 4 with a production of Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saens.
    Since his time at Milan's La Scala, Paris opera director Stephane Lissner is known as a risk-taker who is never satisfied with standard shows. And Michieletto's work, whether successful or provoking storms of criticism, is never standard.
    The last example was opposition from the London public to a gang rape scene in his production of William Tell. Despite criticism that the scene was gratuitous, he refused to cut it, saying that it drew attention to the plight of women in warfare.
    As in William Tell, this modern version of Samson and Delilah includes a scene of one people oppressing another.
    "I focused on the concept of slavery - I was interested in portraying suffering, because in suffering we are all the same.
    What you see therefore is a conflict between one who is treated as a slave, an object, and another who perpetrates the violence," the Venetian director said.
    He describes Delilah as a woman who is "brutalised by the society in which she lives, devoted to possession and domination, and who completes a course: she has a realisation and she feels responsible for the destruction of Samson, the man who abandoned everything for her," he said.