Demetrio e Polibio

Rossini’s very first opera, written when he was a teenager, was premiered i Rome in 1812 and revived at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in 2010. Young stage director Davide Livermore, heading a production of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino, turns the libretto into a ghost story, setting the action at night, behind the stage of an opera house. Thanks to various “phantasmagorical” tricks, Livermore creates an enchanting atmosphere that is musically rendered by the Orchestra Sinfonica Rossini under Corrado Rovaris. Each giving outstanding performances are the four young soloists Maria José Moreno, Victoria Zaytseva, Yijie Shi and Mirco Palazzi, “stars of the highest international order” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

Tutto Verdi – Luisa Miller

The story of the star-crossed lovers Luisa and Rodolfo fully occupies center stage in this production from the 2007 Festival Verdi in Parma, with a minimalist decor highlighted by a simple wooden table for the heroine’s home, and an elegant sofa for the home of the noble Walter family. Franco-Italian director Denis Krief pares down the production to focus on the music and, above all, the outstanding singers. Fiorenza Cedolins heads the roster of great Verdi artists in this production.

I Lombardi alla prima crociata

The production from the Teatro di San Carlo of Naples is dominated by the formidable voices of Ruggero Raimondi as Pagano, a Muslim who helps the Crusaders, and Dimitra Theodossiou as Giselda, the Christian maiden captured by the Sultan of Antioch, and who falls in love with his son Oronte. Raimondi, an internationally celebrated bass-baritone even before his immortal turn as Don Giovanni in Joseph Losey’s 1979 film, imbues his voice with a rich melancholy that humanizes his ambiguous role. The young Greek-German soprano Theodossiou has been hailed as one of the most exciting new Verdi and bel canto voices ever since her success in Verdi’s ‘Attila’ in Bologna and Parma in 1999.

Maria Stuarda

‘Maria Stuarda’, the tragedy of the Stuart Queen Mary and her embittered foe Elizabeth, is the most popular work in Donizetti’s trilogy of bel canto operas on Tudor queens (next to ‘Anna Bolena’ and ‘Roberto Devereux’). The production of Venice’s Teatro La Fenice shows Maria and Elisabetta both as prisoners, trapped in a labyrinth that is the central set element in Italian-based Franco-Tunisian director Denis Krief’s staging. With his sharp and lively conducting, Fabrizio Maria Carminati puts the Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice entirely at the service of three exceptional singers, Sonia Ganassi (‘an extraordinary performance,’ Opera Today) as Elisabetta, Fiorenza Cedolins (‘colorful, nuanced, highly dramatic heroine,’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) as Maria Stuarda, and José Bros as a passionate Leicester. The recording was made at Venice’s beautiful Teatro La Fenice, rebuilt after the fire that destroyed it in 1996.

Aida

From the ancient Teatro Greco in Taormina, the ‘pearl of the Ionian Sea’, comes this visually and vocally impressive open-air production of Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘Aida’. Evoking a’Spielberg film’ (Quotidiano.net), stage and video director Enrico Castiglione projects video images upon the columns and ruins of the 3rd-century B.C. amphitheater, creating a breathtaking virtual backdrop of Egyptian pillars and palms that opens onto the ‘Nile’, in this case, the Ionian Sea.

Zelmira

The Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Rossini’s birthplace, is internationally renowned for its innovative stagings and musically impeccable productions of Rossini’s works. In this staging of the dramma per musica ‘Zelmira’, the Festival once again lays claim to this reputation. Stage director Giorgio Barberio Corsetti ‘delivers a production of great visual fascination and dramaturgical intelligence’ (Corriere della Sera). This rediscovery should help ‘Zelmira’ return to theaters everywhere.

La Scala di Seta

In this colorful and exuberant production by Damiano Michieletto, ‘one of the truly new voices in stage direction today’ (L’Unità), Rossini’s ‘La Scala di Seta’ becomes an Almodóvaresque spectacle ‘that transforms all the singers into extraordinary actors’ (La Stampa). Leading the young and spirited cast is Maestro Claudio Scimone, a key figure in the international Rossini Renaissance, who conducts the Orchestra di Bolzano e Trento with precision and incisiveness, highlighting the Rossinian instrumental

colors as well as the comical and sentimental currents of the score’ (Il Giornale di Vicenza).

Attila

Stage director Jérôme Savary, known for his colorfully imaginative productions, staged Giuseppe Verdi’s early opera “Attila” at Milan’s La Scala in 1991. Riccardo Muti led the chorus and orchestra of the celebrated opera house, and the cast included such illustrious names as Cheryl Studer and Samuel Ramey. Giuseppe Verdi wrote altogether five operas for the renowned Teatro La Fenice in Venice. The successful collaboration documents Verdi’s ascent to the pinnacle of Italy’s opera composers in the second half of the 19th century. It began in 1844 with “Ernani” and continued two years later with “Attila.” There followed “Rigoletto” (1851), “La Traviata” (1853) and “Simone Boccanegra” (first version, 1857). The literary source of the opera is the stage play “Attila, King of the Huns” by the German dramatist Zacharias Werner. However, Verdi and his librettists were less interested in the play than in the political message: the struggle for liberation of an oppressed nation from its occupiers. As in “Nabucco” and “I Lombardi,” “Attila,” too, was intended as a signal of support for the unification of Italy (“Risorgimento”) and was enthusiastically understood as such by Italian patriots. The Roman general Ezio offers the entire world to the King of the Huns if he is allowed to keep Italy; Attila refuses and is ultimately killed by a female freedom fighter brandishing his own sword. In the following years “Attila” disappeared from the repertoires of the opera houses; Verdi’s global successes such as “Rigoletto,” “Il Trovatore” and “La Traviata” seemed more important to international operas houses. Only since the 1950s has the work been staged now and again – as an insider’s tip for connoisseurs, who admire the logically constructed action and, above all, the impressive music for four top singers and large chorus. In the score of Attila” one finds enchanting lyrical moments as well as rousing, highly effective passages. The aristocrat of conductors, the autocrat of the baton, Riccardo Muti cuts a noble figure at the head of any orchestra, and ennobles every ensemble through his charismatic personality and red-blooded musicality. In many respects, including his unwillingness to compromise over artistic matters, he is reminiscent of Arturo Toscanini, who was also a demanding ruler at the podium. His rise to international fame set in with his guest conductorships at the Salzburg Festival in 1971 and at the head of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1972. Muti became principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra a few years later, and was named its music director in 1980. Always a conductor of both the symphonic and operatic repertoire, Muti advanced to the post of music director of La Scala in Milan in 1986. The 1990s saw Muti consolidating his reputation at the head of this venerable institution, as well as in countless other high-caliber venues around the world. Today he is one of the undisputed giants among the leading conductors of the world.