“Especially notable: Sgura’s thrilling Scarpia, who made evil sound so perniciously quotidian, and the playing of an orchestra that lives and breathes this music.” (Operatraveller.com) In the unique atmosphere of the Sferisterio, a huge neoclassical arena erected in the 1820s, Argentinean director Valentina Carrasco stages her Tosca in a 1950s film set, thus corresponding to Puccini’s cinematographic compositional style. The cinematic realization of this recording underlines the cinematic character of the production. “Valentina Carrasco set up a real fictional machine, with all the bolts put in the right place, aided by an impeccable set design by Samal Blak, which would have been half as good without Peter van Praet’s essential lighting play” (Vivere fermo). Claudio Sgura’s Scarpia is “incredibly well sung” (Operatraveller.com). Long applause also for maestro Donato Renzetti, the festival’s new musical director.
Hamlet
This production “offers all an Italian-opera-lover could possibly desire” wrote the FAZ after the revival of this “forgotten gem” at the Bregenz Festival. The festival continued ist rediscovery series with “Amleto/Hamlet”, an opera by Verdi contemporaries Franco Faccio and Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet. Premiered in 1865 in Genoa and restaged in 1871 at Milano’s La Scala, “Hamlet” was only revived in 2014 concertante in the US before ist “triumphal rebirth” (Deutschlandradio Kultur) at the Bregenz Festival, where the opera was also recorded for the first time ever. Faccio, who conducted the first performance of Verdi’s Aida in Italy and the world premiere of Otello, and Boito, Verdi’s librettist of Otello and Falstaff, skillfully and effectively challenge the conventions of Italian opera, which they wanted to revitalize by infusing it with the spirit of Shakespeare’s drama. Anticipating the musical language of later Italian verismo composers, the opera combines lovely musical interludes with superb vocal writing. Heading a supreme cast, Pavel Cernoch as Amleto delivers superbly, “using his colorful tenor skillfully to develop the transformation of the insecure youngling to the ice-cold avenger” (NZZ) and “granting the work large scale” (Abendzeitung). Under the baton of Paolo Carignani with the Vienna Symphoniker and Prague Philharmonic Choir “it carried terrific punch (The Telegraph)”. Olivier Tambosi’s “excellent staging served it well, with a clear focus on the high points (The Telegraph)”. “In the intermission and at the end there was vociferous enthusiasm of the audience for the late first encounter with this music” (Neue Musikzeitung). “There is a lot of exciting music to discover in this opera…What an amazing richness in ideas! This opera is worth to be rediscovered.” (SZ) // “Faccio’s opera is the one that should be performed, and if plans are not already afoot to bring it to the land of Shakespeare, they certainly should be.“ (The Telegraph) // “The Shakespeare year now has a breathtaking Shakespeare rediscovery. Yes, the musically convincing, pompous Hamlet opera does exist!” (FAZ)
Tutto Verdi – The Operas Vol. 2, 1847 – 1853
Il Trovatore
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
Love and revenge are fatally interwoven in Il trovatore, and barely any of the characters survives the sombre action. Based on a Spanish play in the tradition of gothic horror, the work was written in 1851–52 and proved to be a triumph for Verdi. Within only a few years it had been performed in major opera houses all over the world and remains one of the most popular operas in the international repertory.
Bregenz Festival 2016: Amleto (Hamlet)
It’s an impetuous, impassioned Hamlet that treads the boards in composer Franco Faccio and librettist Arrigo Boito’s opera Hamlet (Amleto), which was first staged in 1865 in Genua. Faccio and Boito skilfully and effectively challenge the conventions of Italian opera, which they wanted to revitalise by infusing it with the spirit of Shakespeare’s drama. Amleto was performed again at La Scala in 1871, after that the opera was not staged again – until 2014 when it was revived in the USA. The Bregenz Festival is now bringing Faccio’s Hamlet back to Europe. This production “offers all an Italian-opera-lover could possibly desire” (FAZ); “a triumphal rebirth” (Deutschlandradio Kultur)
Arena di Verona Festival 2022: Carmen
After many worldwide successes as Carmen, Elina Garanca now makes her long-awaited debut on the world’s largest opera stage, the nearly 2,000-year-old Arena di Verona. “With perfect diction, [Elina Garanca’s] bohemian is a true stage beast who makes a mockery of life with panache, taunting her lover just out of prison with sarcastic ‘taratata’ and then daring to face an adverse fate with implausible aplomb.” (Crescendo-Magazine.be). Italian film and stage director Franco Zeffirelli also made his debut at the Arena back then with Carmen. On the occasion of his 100th birthday, his three versions were put together for the first time in a “best of” version. The side set painted for the first edition and the large number of people and wide movements that characterized the original production are set back on stage. Highlights of the 2003 and 2009 stagings are skillfully combined with this. The 2022 production is hence something never seen before, which even proposes scenography’s elements that haven’t been realized in the previous stagings, but were originally planned by Zeffirelli.