Summer at the Teatro del Maggio!
The Teatro del Maggio presents the activities for the summer of 2024
An opera, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, by Gioachino Rossini, in Cavea; a choral symphony concert conducted by Hankyeol Yoon.
Il Maggio as ambassador of Culture: two important international tours, the first in China in Tianjin and Beijing and the second in Slovenia, in Ljubljana
The collaboration with the Cherubini Conservatory, the Belle Arti di Firenze Academy and, then, with the Rossini Philharmonic.
Florence, May 13th 2024 – The Teatro del Maggio Fiorentino presents the program of summer 2024 activities: Barbiere di Siviglia staged in Cavea, on 18th, 20th, 22nd and 24th July at 9 pm, a symphonic-choral concert conducted by Hankyeol Yoon on July 23rd at 9pm and two international tours, which will see maestro Zubin Mehta on the podium of the Maggio Orchestra and Choir on both trips: the first in China in Tianjin on June 19th and in Beijing on June 20th , 21, 22 and 23 June the second in Ljubljana, 8, 9 and 10 July.
The Cavea del Teatro, the evocative open-air theater located right on the roof of the Maggio, which hosts – 18th, 20th, 22nd and 24th July at 9 pm – is light up and open up to the Florentine audience and tourists with of Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Gioachino Rossini, directed by the young maestro Riccardo Bisatti with the now "traditional" direction by Damiano Michieletto here revived by Andrea Bernard. Almost exactly twenty years after its first staging, which took place in July 2005 at the Roman Theater of Fiesole and therefore originally created and conceived for an open space, just like the Cavea del Maggio, it reaches its tenth staging in the theater seasons. Despite its age, it maintains intact all its freshness, originality and modernity which have made it an "always green" and highly appreciated exhibition of the Maggio over time. Michieletto's show sees an almost total absence of real scenes and focuses all the attention on comic gags and carefully crafted gestures, and begins like a train journey, announced by the loudspeaker; a cheerful way of traveling "through" Rossini's work, recalling places and situations with imagination. Evocative and bizarre costumes and bright colors make the characters caricatures, almost as if they were characters linked to commedia dell'arte: Don Basilio is green and with long, greasy hair and a hooked nose, all green with envy like a snake (or rather, a basilisk); Figaro has hair that hints at fox ears and a moustache, while Don Bartolo, all in white, resembles a pot-bellied bulldog who looks jealously at Rosina, dressed in red like her lover Lindoro.
The cast is made up of two young absolute debutants on the scenes of Maggio - Hae Kang, recently winner of the first prize at the “Voci Verdiane” International Competition in Busseto, as Figaro and Bozhidar Bozhkilovin the part of Don Basilio; Laura Verrecchia, who returns to the Maggio after the performances of Madama Butterfly in December 2021, plays the role of Rosina while Matteo D'Apolito, also making his debut at the Maggio, plays Don Bartolo. Three talents and former talents of the Accademia del Maggio form the rest of the vocal cast: Dave Monaco in the part of Count d'Almaviva – Lindoro; Letizia Bertoldi as Berta and Yurii Strakhov in the double role of Fiorello/An officer. The prices offered to the public for these shows on summer evenings in Cavea are 50 euros per seat for the first sector and 30 for the second sector. Tickets go on sale starting May 14th.
The choral symphony concert on July 23 at 9 pm will be directed by another young conductor Hankyeol Yoon, who has already won multiple awards in numerous competitions including recently the prestigious first prize "Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award". Thanks to this important victory, the Maggio Fiorentino offered him his Italian debut with the double concert last February - warmly welcomed by both the public and the critics - and reconfirmed him for this summer, anticipating his debut at the Salzburg Festival next month of August. As a follow-up to the proposal of the incidental music from Peer Gynt, by Grieg, last January, for this second presence at Yoon's May, Ein Sommernachtstraum (A Midsummer Night's Dream) is proposed on the programme, incidental music Op. 61. by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy with the solo voices of two talents from the Accademia del Maggio, the soprano Letizia Bertoldi and the mezzo
Olha Smokolina; the acting voice is Davide Gasparro, who has been present several times with great success in the theater's shows for children in recent years. The master of the Coro del Maggio is Lorenzo Fratini. Tickets are offered at 40 euros and 20 euros.
The tours:
An important and long-awaited trip to China, a country where Maggio is still remembered, loved and respected for the famous Turandot staged in the Forbidden City in 1997, will touch Tianjin on 19 and 20 June and Beijing on 21, 22 and 23 June. Il Maggio returns to the Asian country after the concert in Shanghai in March 2011 again with a symphonic program and, now as in previous times, with maestro Zubin Mehta.
In Tianjin at the grand Theater the concert n.2 for piano and orchestra by Fryderyk Chopin (soloist Vanessa Benelli Mosell) and the Symphony n. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, B. 141 by Antonín Dvořák will be performed on June 19th.; on the 20th a program entirely dedicated to Ludwig van Beethoven will be performed with the concert for violin and orchestra in D major, op. 61 with Amira Abouzara solo on violin, and Symphony n. 7 in A major Op. 92. In Beijing at the Beijing National Center for the Performing Arts the first two programs will be offered on the 21st and 22nd, while on the last evening of June 23rd together with concert no. 2 for piano and orchestra by Chopin, Beethoven's Symphony no. will be performed. 7.
Sixteen years after the last time, the conductor emeritus Zubin Mehta returns to Slovenia at the Ljubljana Festival for the second tour of the May: a three-day trip, from 8 to 10 July, which will see the Maestro, the Orchestra and the Coro del Maggio engaged in an opera, with two performances scheduled, and a symphony concert.
On 8 and 10 July at 8pm at the Cankarjev Dom, the largest cultural and conference center in Slovenia, Il Trovatore is programmed, in the stage production designed by Cesare Lievi – revived by Stefania Grazioli – which debuted in the Sala Mehta of the Teatro del Maggio in the autumn of 2022 and which 'paints' Verdi's masterpiece with decidedly dark features, as underlined by Lievi himself, trying to stage a tangle firmly linked to a past that promptly returns. The past, to which the very important background of the work refers, which brings with it a destructive force that is totally inevitable for anyone.
The singing company is made up of Leon Kim, trained at the Accademia del Maggio, in the role of Il Conte di Luna; Carolina López Moreno as Leonora; Matteo Desole as Manrico; Olesya Petrova as Azucena while Giorgi Manoshvili is Ferrando. The cast closes with Olha Smokolina and Alfonso Zambuto in the roles of Ines and Ruiz respectively. The roles of the old gypsy and the messenger will be entrusted to two artists from the Coro del Maggio.
Between these two Verdi evenings, a symphony concert which puts on the lecterns of the Maggio Orchestra a program here as in Taijin entirely dedicated to the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven: at the opening Egmont, an overture written by the genius from Bonn as part of the incidental music for a revival of Goethe's Egmont at the Hofburgtheater in Vienna; follows the concert for violin and orchestra in D major, op. 61 which features violinist Lana Trotovšekv as soloist. The concert closes with one of the most significant compositions of Beethoven's repertoire, Symphony no. 7 in A major Op. 92.
The Maggio summer events also include two different performance opportunities that arise from the collaboration of the Theater with the city's musical institutions, in this case the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory (and the the Belle Arti di Firenze Academy) of Florence and the Rossini Philharmonic.
With the Conservatory and its students, both on stage and in the pit, and the Belle Arti di Firenze Academy one of Gaetano Donizetti's most famous opera titles, L'elisir d'amore, will be performed at the Goldoni Theater on 20 and 21 June 2024. With the "Rossini" Philharmonic of Florence, after last summer's concert, a new concert event returns a year later, on 11 July at 9pm in Sala Mehta.