On 16 January 2024, Teatro del Maggio winter Season officially begins: on the evenings of Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 January at 8 p.m., on the stage of the Mehta Hall, the curtain opens on Peer Gynt, the stage music composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsen's masterpiece of the same name, proposed 22 years after the performances in January 2002. The dramatic poem, which is based on the figure of Peer, a young layabout who lives his life amid material pleasures and fantastic gimmicks, and unfolds to a very noble and refined musical score by Grieg (which in the symphonic suites that have resulted from it - for example the highly recognisable "Morning" - have become emblematic and celebrated harmonies), is proposed in concert form in the elaboration of director and playwright Pier Paolo Pacini. On the podium, conducting the Maggio Orchestra and Chorus, goes maestro Nikolas Nägele, who returns to the Maggio after conducting Hänsel und Gretel - in March 2016. Nägele trained at the Accademia del Maggio and was Kappellmeister at the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 2017 to 2019 and several times assistant to Christian Thielemann in Salzburg and Bayreuth. The cast is led by the great Florentine actor Sandro Lombardi as the protagonist of the story, Peer Gynt; by the actress Elena Ghiaurov in the part of Aase, Solvejg, and the actor, Annibale Pavone, in the role of The Magician. The vocal interventions are entrusted to soprano Aitana Sanz-Pérez and mezzo-soprano Olha Smokolina, both talents of the Accademia del Maggio, in the parts of Solvejg and Anìtra respectively; Constanza Antunica, Nadia Pirazzini, and Chiara Chisu, artists of the Coro del Maggio, in the roles of the Drei Säterinnen, complete the bill.

The performance on January 16, 2024, will be broadcast prerecorded on Rai Radio 3

Thanks to Sidsel Vivarelli Colonna and Christel Smith for Norwegian language consulting