Giacomo Puccini provides a musical rollercoaster of emotions – from Tosca’s poignant ‘Vissi d’arte’ to Cavaradossi’s powerful ‘Recondita armonia’ and Scarpia’s sombre aria ‘Ha più forte sapore’. A firework display of emotions with captivating melodies that find the perfect echo in the rocky landscape of the St. Margarethen quarry. The production, led by director and set designer Thaddeus Strassberger and costume designer Giuseppe Palella, will take us to the heart of Enlightenment Rome with its Baroque traces. The musical direction of the Tosca production in the St. Margarethen quarry will once again be taken on by Italian conductor Valerio Galli.
La Bohème
Puccini’s masterpiece La Bohème is by far the most represented opera in the world. At the famous Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, where Puccini composed his main operas, La Bohème is directed by one of Italy’s greatest film directors: Ettore Scola, the creator of a high number of award-winning seminal films. As he explains in the programme notes, as soon as he was approached to stage La Bohème he had to fight hard to resist the temptation to give life to his “revolutionary” ideas; in the end, he decided for a traditional-looking, rich, grandiose and detailed Bohème. Together with the exceptional cast of Daniela Dessì, Fabio Armiliato, Alessandro Luongo, Alida Berti and Marco Spotti, this production makes for an incomparable great performance.