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| Arts Calendar / May 18 / Opera |
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Gioachino Rossini's opera in two acts. 150 min. (with interval). Sung in Italian. Libretto by Felice Romani. Music Director: Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Stage Director: Olga Ivanova. Conductor and Chorus Master: Alexey Vereshchagin. Set and Costume Designer: Viktor Gerasimenko. Choreographer: Ekaterina Mironova. Rossini was just 22 when he wrote Il turco in Italia, his 13th opera and his third for La Scala, Milan. The young composer clearly relished librettist Felice Romani's outrageous farce, which serves up brazen ridiculousness with cynical delight. But the heroine's wildly immoral antics caused some consternation at the opera's premiere on 14 August 1814, and would play a part in Il turco's virtual disappearance from Europe's stages later in the century. The opera wasn't seen again until 1950, in Luchino Visconti's La Scala production, which starred Maria Callas as the incorrigible Fiorilla. The production's triumph secured the opera's position as one of Rossini's most complex and uproarious comedies. Boris Pokrovsky Chamber Stage |
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Opera in two acts by Giacomo Puccini. 160 min (with interval). Music Director and Conductor Jan Latham-Koenig. Conductors Jan Latham-Koenig, Evgeny Samoilov. Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904) is ranked among the best classical operas. This work tells a tragic story of love of a young Japanese geisha from Nagasaki for an American lieutenant, and from a broader point of view it speaks of incompatibility of Western and Eastern cultural traditions. Novaya Opera Theatre |
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