On the podium is festival music director Riccardo Frizza; direction is by Stephen Langridge
As Elizabeth I the soprano Jessica Pratt, Roberto Devereux is tenor John Osborne, while Simone Piazzola will be Nottingham and Raffaella Lupinacci Sara The premiere will be preceded by the Donizetti Talk in-depth meeting and open rehearsal and the preview dedicated to the under 30s Teatro Donizetti, Bergamo
Friday, Nov. 8, 5 p.m.30 (Donizetti Talk)
Tuesday, Nov. 12, 5 p.m. (preview under 30)
Friday, Nov. 15, 8 p.m. (non-subscription)
Saturday, Nov. 23, 8 p.m. (non-subscription – as an option to Round C)
Thursday, Nov. 28, 8 p.m. (Round A)
The debut of the first title to be staged at Teatro Donizetti is approaching: Roberto Devereux, one of Gaetano Donizetti’s most beloved operas scheduled for Friday, Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. (replays on Saturday, Nov. 23 and Thursday, Nov. 28, also at 8 p.m.). So we are just a few days away from the official start of the 10th edition of the Donizetti Opera festival, an event of international significance dedicated to the composer from Bergamo and by the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti chaired by Giorgio Berta with the general direction of Massimo Boffelli, the artistic direction of Francesco Micheli and the musical direction of Riccardo Frizza. An unfailing stop toward the premiere of Roberto Devereux the Donizetti Talk scheduled for Friday, Nov. 8 at 5:30 p.m. in the Riccardi Room of the Donizetti Theater with musicologists from the festival’s Scientific Area Livio Aragona and Maurizio Merisio and the participation of conductor Riccardo Frizza and director Stephen Langridge. The audience will then have the opportunity to access the ensemble rehearsal of the opera and thus preview a scene from the new production.
Reservations are recommended to attend at www.donizettiopera.org. On Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 5 p.m., it will instead be the youth audience that will be able to attend the opera thanks to theunder-30 preview, tickets for which cost 10 euros. “Roberto Devereux is my favorite Donizetti opera,” has repeatedly had occasion to declare the festival’s music director Riccardo Frizza, who, after having performed it around the world, will be on the podium of the Donizetti Opera Orchestra bringing to the music stands the National Edition realized by Casa Ricordi in collaboration with and with the contribution of the City of Bergamo and the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti edited by Julia Lockhart, published in 2022.
“Roberto Devereux is a masterpiece, indeed perhaps Donizetti’s masterpiece, at least in the field of Italian opera,” Frizza emphasizes. “It is the title of the turning point, of complete maturity. There will be other masterpieces, especially French ones, but none will move the bar of Donizettian inspiration higher. By force: a very strong and passionate story, with well-drawn characters, an extraordinary figure of a power woman in love, great musical invention and a great formal freedom, transcending the closed forms that were still the rule of melodrama at the time. And, in the end, an altogether unusual subject, unique, I think, in Donizetti’s enormous catalog: the transience of time, of men and things.” The direction, on the other hand, is by Englishman Stephen Langridge, who is currently artistic director of the Glyndebourne Festival as well as a regular guest on major stages such as the Royal Opera House in London, the Lyric Opera in Chicago, and the Salzburg Festival. “Our staging,” Langridge declares, “is certainly contemporary, but set in an Elizabethan fantasy world. I have nothing against using contemporary dress to explore a historical subject (Shakespeare did it all the time!), but this time I and Katie Davenport, who signs both sets and costumes, wanted to keep the flavor of the Elizabethan world. The production is by no means realistic or objective, but neither is Donizetti’s opera. Rather, it is a subjective staging, allowing us to explore inner emotional and psychological landscapes.”
The vocal protagonists of this which is “the last stage of the noir saga that over the years Donizetti dedicated to the Tudor dynasty” (P. Fabbri), are some celebrated Belcanto performers such as Jessica Pratt (Elisabetta), John Osborn (Roberto Devereux), Simone Piazzola (Nottingham), Raffaella Lupinacci (Sara), David Astorga (Cecil), Ignazio Melnikas (a pupil of Bottega Donizetti 2024) and Fulvio Valenti (A Familiar of Nottingham and A Knight); sets and costumes are by Katie Davenport; the staging is co-produced with the Teatro Sociale of Rovigo. Donizetti worked on the composition of the opera during the summer of 1837, a period ravaged by negative events, such as the death of his third son and especially his beloved wife Virginia Vasselli. The Devereux is a turning point opera. Compared to the previous “English” titles, and benefiting from the experience he had gained, the musician investigated the figure of Elisabeth more thoroughly, and drew from it a tragic and multifaceted character, to which corresponds a vocality that is at once impervious, virtuosic and sorrowful.
