Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci is a opera of tremendous energy and impetus, up to the final scene, one of the most gripping of Italian opera. The aria”Vesti la giubba” “put on your costume” is one of the best-renowned tenor arias of the whole repertoire. It is in fact both an expressive and a vocal test for any lyric tenor.

Domenico Cimarosa’s most successful opera, The Secret Marriage, was composed on a libretto written by Giovanni Bertati, a Venetian employed as court poet in Vienna, on a subject very popular at the time. The story was in fact at the centre of a series of 6 paintings by William Hogarth, the Marriage in Fashion, le Mariage à la Mode, published in London between 1743 and 1745, depicting the bad consequences of a wedding between a penniless aristocrat and a rich bourgeois. Bertati the librettist turns the social satire into a mockery of bourgeois, eager to ennoble but happy to save half of the dowry when the opportunity arises.

Now available on demand until 20th of April 2017, Puccini’s La bohème, which opened the 2016-2017 opera season and was broadcasted from the Teatro Regio in Turin. Gianandrea Noseda conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Regio in a new staging by Àlex Ollé. This staging of La Bohème marks the 120th anniversary of the opera world premiere, which took place at the Regio on 1st of February 1896 conducted by a 29 years old Arturo Toscanini.

The main difference between Opera and the previous polyphonic vocal music is the unique melodic line, resulting from the merging of bass and singing. In polyphonic music different vocal lines work independently, overlapping one another and making a text often incomprehensible. Opera instead offered a new way for making words expressive and intelligible, by creating a single melodic line, supported by an accompaniment.