Jolanta

Iolanta, who is blind, lives in a beautiful garden, locked away by her father, the King. To save her pain, he has left her in ignorance of her blindness and forbids anyone to tell her about it. It is only when the young Count Vaudémont accidently penetrates her refuge and the two fall in love that her father's structure of lies begins to crack, giving Iolanta the motivation to discover what seeing is.

What does a blind person feel and how does he/she react when he/she can suddenly see again? These are the questions that Peter I. Tchaikovsky asked himself when he was composing his last opera, the libretto for which goes back to an idea of Hans Christian Andersen. Captivated by the poetic moments and deeply symbolic character portraits contained in it, in 1892 Tchaikovsky wrote, with "Iolanta", a wonderfully romantic one-act opera, the heart of which is undoubtedly the moving love duet between Iolanta and Vaudémont.