The compelling power of Zandonai’s best opera Francesca da Rimini is the best known of Riccardo Zandonai’s opera, a work of musical richness and compelling dramatic power. D’Annunzio’s play, written in the years of his obsession for Wagner, has many parallels with Tristan und Isolde, as for instance the minstrel account of Isolde’s story at the beginning of the opera and the “goblet scene” in act two. The epitome of a tragic love The first act takes place in Ravenna: Francesca da Polenta, daughter of the lord of the city, is about to marry Guido Malatesta, called Gianciotto because of his deformity (he’s crippled): she’s led to believe that the groom to be is the handsome Paolo, Gianciotto’s brother. In the second act, the following winter, the Guelphs Malatesta, at war with the Ghibellines, are besieging their castle in Rimini. Francesca meets Paolo in the castle and blames him for deceiving her into marriage. Gianciotto arrives followed by their brother Malatestino, who is wounded. In act three, a few months later, Francesca is in her room reading when Paolo, back from a long journey, enters. After confessing each other their love, they go back to the reading which features the […]
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.
We usually think of music as entertainment, but in the ancient world, music was often considered a form of medicine. Over the past few decades, scientists have rediscovered music’s healing abilities, and studies have shown that music can effectively treat conditions such as schizophrenia, depression, chronic pain, Parkinson’s, PTSD, autism, help stroke patients recover, and more.
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.