The fight between Tancredi and Clorinda is one of the hardest scenes in Jerusalem Delivered. A crusader and a Muslim princess fall in love on the battlefield, but still decide to fight to the death: in this clash between cultures and religions, honor proves stronger than feeling. This scene becomes the center of the libretto Tancréde, written in 1701 by Antoine Danchet for André Campra’s opera. In 2016, Lucia Ronchetti, one of the most important living Italian composers, condensed the text in order to compose the chamber opera Rivale: a monodrama for soprano, cello, brass ensemble and metal percussion. The female character’s inner conflict appealed to director Giulio Boato and moved him to make a dreamy filmic work, one in which the protagonist HsiaoPei Ku splits into multiple entities, a prisoner in a Russian doll of dreams. After debuting at Berlin’s 2017 Staatsoper Unter den Linden, and having its first Italian performance in 2019 at the Sagra Malatestiana in Rimini, Rivale became a cinematographic work based on the musical score. The desire was to create a vortex of sensations and emotions poised between music, theatre and cinema.