Rossini’s first masterpiece, L’italiana in Algeri, from the prestigious Rossini Festival in Pesaro in a new production staged by Italian director Davide Livermore.
Rossini Festival Pesaro: Guillaume Tell
“The Rossini Festival supplied brilliant solutions” to the challenges of Rossini’s rarely performed work composed in the style of French “grand” opera. On the rostrum Gianfranco Mariotti, graduate of Pesaro’s Rossini Conservatory and one of the the world’s most sought after conductors for this repertoire, and “may be the only one person more appreciated in Pesaro than Juan Diego Flórez,” who performs the role of Arnold Melchtal in this production. (Opera Today)
La gazzetta
The event that takes place annually in Rossini’s birthplace, praised by press and public for its witty stagings even of Rossini’s less well known works, has landed on its feet: with La gazzetta, the Rossini Opera Festival has triumphed once again! The Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna responded splendidly to the young Italian conductor Enrique Mazzola: as “one of the most gifted artists of his generation, he is not only a faithful interpreter of the score, he sends the orchestra of the Teatro di Bologna – and his
audience too – into a veritable Rossini delirium” (Deutschlandfunk). Director Marco Carniti stages his colourful production in the Paris of the 1950s, in a well-judged distillation of Rossini’s ironic social criticism: “the direction of Marco Carniti has intelligently focused on the ironic dimension of a somewhat confused libretto” (Huffington Post). Nicola
Alaimo embodies the nouveau-riche Don Pomponio Storione in every muscle: “he has confirmed his admirable dramatic qualities, with evidence of an unsuspected physical agility” (Huffington Post). Pesaro debutante Hasmik Torosyan stands out as Lisetta (Deutschlandfunk).
Sigismondo
Filled with beautiful, original music, Rossini’s rarely performed “Sigismondo” was resurrected at the 2010 Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. The press called the production a “perfect symbiosis of music and stage work” (Quotidiano Nazionale). Director Damiano Michieletto sets the first act in a realistic “insane asylum” of past times; the second take place in an elegant palace. Mezzo Daniela Barcellona portrays the mad King Sigismondo with fierce intensity and flowing coloraturas; also outstanding are Olga Peretyatko, Antonino Siragusa and Andrea Concetti. Leading the orchestra with supreme musicality is Michele Mariotti, principal conductor of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and acclaimed maestro at La Scala, the Met and other leading houses.