The Comunale’s Orchestra opens and closes the Rossini Opera Festival

The Comunale’s Orchestra opens and closes the Rossini Opera Festival

The Orchestra of Teatro Comunale di Bologna both opens and closes the 47th Rossini Opera Festival. The Bolognese ensemble launches the Pesaro festival on Tuesday 11 August at 7pm at the Auditorium Scavolini with the new production of Le siège de Corinthe, and brings it to a close in the same hall on Sunday 23 August with the Stabat Mater. In between come La scala di seta at the Teatro Rossini and the recital Flórez 30. The opening nights of both operas are broadcast live on Rai Radio3.

At the heart of the new staging of Le siège de Corinthe, directed by Davide Livermore, lies the idea of modernity drifting destructively against the beauty built by human hands in the past. The three-act tragédie lyrique is given in its original French version, with further performances on 14, 17 and 21 August. Carlo Rizzi, a long-standing presence at the Festival, takes the podium; the Chorus of Teatro Ventidio Basso is prepared by Pasquale Veleno. Livermore also designs the sets with Eleonora Peronetti and Paolo Gep Cucco; the costumes are by Gianluca Falaschi. The cast features Adrian Sâmpetrean (Mahomet), Matteo Roma (Cléomène), Vasilisa Berzhanskaya (Pamyra) and Maxim Mironov (Néoclès).

La scala di seta returns to the ROF, where it was first staged in 2009, in Damiano Michieletto’s production with sets and costumes by Paolo Fantin. The Mexican conductor Iván López-Reynoso directs. The one-act comic farce opens on Thursday 13 August at 8pm at the Teatro Rossini, with further performances on 16, 19 and 22 August; the cast includes Alasdair Kent (Dorvil), Hasmik Torosyan (Giulia) and Paolo Bordogna (Germano).

There are two symphonic dates. On Tuesday 18 August at 8pm Flórez 30 marks thirty years since Juan Diego Flórez’s Festival debut, again with López-Reynoso on the podium and music by Rossini, Massenet, Gounod, Offenbach and Donizetti. On Sunday 23 August at 8.30pm Ramón Tebar conducts the Stabat Mater with soloists Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Anna-Doris Capitelli, Dmitry Korchak and Adrian Sâmpetrean; the concert is screened live in Piazza del Popolo.