Guided opera viewings at the tenth edition of the Donizetti Opera festival

  A new review is born on the occasion of the festival’s 10th anniversary: DeCineForum Donizetti, five appointments for as many operas to watch and understand together. Curated by the scientific section of the Donizetti Opera, this musical “cineforum” wishes to accompany the public to the festival during the months when live appointments are not scheduled. In the Music Room of the Donizetti Theater, set up for optimal audio-video enjoyment, five Donizetti titles, particularly significant for the composer’s career, will be offered, chosen from the productions staged over the past ten years by the festival, recorded by the Dynamic record company and belonging to different genres: to opera semiseria to opera buffa to the great melodramas. In detail: on Saturday, April 20 (2:30 p.m.) the following will be screened. Henry of Burgundy, a title of the #Donizetti200 cycle staged at the Teatro Sociale in 2018, two hundred years after its debut at the Teatro San Luca in Venice (a melodrama in two acts of the semiserio genre on a libretto by Bartolomeo Merelli), with Alessandro De Marchi conducting, Silvia Paoli directing and a cast of outstanding performers such as Anna Bonitatibus, Sonia Ganassi and Luca Tittoto. The screening will be preceded by a presentation by Candida Mantica. Livio Aragona will present the second title on the program, Saturday, April 27 (2:30 p.m.) Olivo and Pasquale, melodramma giocoso in two acts to a libretto by Jacopo Ferretti, staged at Bergamo’s Teatro Sociale for the 2016 festival in the autumn 1827 version, created for the Teatro Nuovo in Naples with alternating spoken dialogues and singing numbers, with Pasquale’s part in Neapolitan. On the podium Federico Maria Sardelli, directed by operAlchemica (Ugo Giacomazzi and Luigi Di Gangi), vocal performers Bruno Taddia, Filippo Morace, Laura Giordano and Pietro Adaini. Saturday, May 25 (2:30 p.m.) Candida Mantica returns to present. Lucrezia Borgia, a melodrama in a prologue and two acts to a libretto by Felice Romani, Donizetti’s tragic masterpiece that will be screened in the version staged at the Teatro Sociale in 2019 with Andrea Bernard directing, Riccardo Frizza conducting and starring Carmela Remigio, Xabier Anduaga, Marko Mimica and Varduhi Abrahamyan. In the fall, when the 10th edition of Donizetti Opera is just around the corner, two more screenings will be held: Saturday, September 28 L’ange de Nisida, on a libretto by Gustave Vaëz and Alphonse Royer, which was supposed to debut at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris in 1839, and instead received its first, acclaimed, staged performance at the very Donizetti Opera in 2019 with Francesco Micheli directing and Jean-Luc Tingaud on the podium; and finally Sunday, September 29 The favorite, grand-opéra to a libretto by Gustave Vaëz, Alphonse Royer and Eugène Scribe, in the full version staged at Teatro Donizetti in 2022 conducted by Riccardo Frizza and directed by Valentina Carrasco. These two productions represent two peaks of Donizetti Opera, having both won the Abbiati Prize of the Italian music critics, l’Ange de Nisida the Special Prize and La favorite best performance of the year.