Arena di Verona Collection vol. 1

Arena di Verona Collection vol. 1

A 3-Opera Digistack (Limited Edition) featuring great productions seen at the prestigious Arena di Verona : Puccini’s Turandot, Gounod’s Roméo & Juliette, Verdi’s Aida.

TURANDOT

For their 88th edition the prestigious Arena di Verona Festival paid tribute to internationally acclaimed Italian stage director Franco Zeffirelli. Zeffirelli delivers an opulent staging of the fairy-tale story of the Chinese Princess Turandot, who will only marry a prince capable of solving her riddles. Russian soprano Maria Guleghina gives a brilliant rendition of Turandot. Salvatore Licitra’s trump card is his imposingly radiant tenor voice of which he remains in sovereign control even in the role’s much-feared highest register. The soprano Tamar Iveri is a beautiful and sensitive Liù.

ROMÉO ET JULIETTE

Roméo et Juliette had not been performed at the Arena since 1977. The new production was entrusted to Italian director Francesco Micheli, who opted for a personal, highly original version: ‘‘An arena within the Arena, like a blood-red Elizabethan theatre. A senescent world that will not let its own children live.’’ Juliette is sung by Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze, returning to one of her early roles at the Salzburg Festival. Stefano Secco, often heard at the Opéra Bastille in Paris and other international venues, is Roméo. Artur Rucinski interprets Mercutio, Romeo’s friend and the rival of Jean-François Borras’s Tybalt. The page Stéphano is sung by soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze.

AIDA

To celebrate the bicentennial of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth, La Fura dels Baus opens the ‘‘Centanario Festival 2013’’ of the Arena di Verona. Carlus Padrissa and Alex Ollé sign a brillant new version of Aida. Aida is the most popular opera at the Verona Festival, the only one performed every year, 17000 spectators enjoy the show every evening. This new production is designed by La Fura dels Baus. They transform the arena into a huge desert, creating mechanical animals and manufacture a solar power plant. They use their experience in leading large-scale shows and opera to create the Aida of the XXIst century splendidly conducted by a young talented conductor : Omer Meir Wellber.

TURANDOT
Music: Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

Turandot : Maria Guleghina
Calaf : Salvatore Licitra
Liù : Tamar Iveri

Orchestra, Coro e Corpo di Ballo della Fondazione Arena di Verona

Conductor : Giuliano Carella
Stage direction & sets : Franco Zeffirelli

ROMÉO ET JULIETTE
Music : Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

Juliette : Nino Machaidze
Roméo : Stefano Secco
Tybalt : Jean-François Borras
Mercutio : Artur Rucinski

Orchestra, Coro e Corpo di Ballo della Fondazione Arena di Verona

Conductor : Fabio Mastrangelo
Stage director : Francesco Micheli

AIDA
Music : Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

Aida : Hui He
Radames : Fabio Sartori
Amneris : Giovanna Casolla
Amonasro : Ambrogio Maestri

Orchestra, Coro e Corpo di Ballo della Fondazione Arena di Verona

Conductor : Omer Meir Wellber
Stage director : La Fura dels Baus