Don Ramiro
This occasionally off-the-wall but finely sung and colourfully staged La Cenerentola was Rome Opera’s first foray into the media market, shown on television and in cinemas across Italy in 2016. It clearly had the funding. Emma Dante’s production will not have come cheap – Vanessa Sannino’s costumes are a particular feature – nor would the singers, given that this is as good a Cenerentola cast as any international house might currently muster.
A philandering nobleman lives without a care for the consequences of his actions. But when one of his conquests ends in murder, he finds himself on the run, pursued by disgruntled ex-lovers, fiancées and a force from beyond the grave. Following his recent spectacular production of Paria, the renowned British director Graham Vick makes a welcome return to OperaVision with this new Don Giovanni from Rome. Italian baritone Alessio Arduini plays the dishonourable Don alongside Georgian soprano and Moniuszko International Vocal Competition winner Salome Jicia as Donna Elvira. This performance is part of OperaVision’s events celebrating the inaugural World Opera Day on 25 October 2019.
It is the first time that the journey to Reims to Rome is represented and this happens on a particular date two days after the death of Philip Gossett, the great musicologist who succeeded in reconstructing this mysterious score in the eighties. The theater has dedicated to him the presentations in progress with a dutiful tribute. Approximately 50% of the music of the Journey to Reims will merge a few years later in Le Comte Oryand for the cases of the lot of the autograph material that was not reused, it was discovered by Gossett in Rome at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in a fund never analyzed before.
Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”.
Tybalt
The sensational hit of Salzburg's 2008 festival season arrives on DVD! Starring tenor Rolando Villazón in a stunning performance, this was the must have ticket of the season. Soprano Nino Machaidze, only 25 years old, burst upon the Salzburg stage with an emotionally vulnerable and vocally spectacular performance. With movie star good looks and a large, warm voice, Machaidze wowed the press and audiences alike. Tony Award winner (South Pacific) Bartlett Sher directs this production of Gounod's classic opera. With sets by Michael Yeargan and costumes by Catherine Zuber, the visually vibrant production is sure to become the benchmark. Bonus materials includes "Salzburg Impressions--Behind the Scenes of Roméo et Juliette," "Love and Death in Verona" and Villazón giving an introduction to the opera.
Ernesto (as Francisco Gatell)
Determined to wed, a foolhardy old man is tricked by his friends into a sham wedding with an impish widow who turns into a harpy -- which subsequently cures his desire to marry in composer Gaetano Donizetti's famous opera buffa. Baritone Alessandro Corbelli plays the title character in this lush 2002 production also starring soprano Eva Mei and tenor Antonino Siragusa, with maestro Gérard Korsten leading the Chorus and Orchestra of Teatro Lirico.
