Macerata Opera

Last updated

The Macerata Opera is the name given to the coordinating bodies of the provincial and local government in Macerata, the provincial capital of the Marche region of Italy, which puts on performances of three or four operas each July and August under the name Macerata Opera Festival. From 1992 the Opera Association was founded by the municipality and the Province Association of Macerata to oversee the operations of the Festival. In addition to the main summer activities, the Association organizes many other musical events, ranging from the New Music Festival to the performances of baroque music in a number of historical sites and buildings. The Association also organizes international conferences.

Contents

Overview

Sferisterio open-air theatre Sferisterio by night 1.jpg
Sferisterio open-air theatre

While the Macerata Opera has organized the Macerata Opera Festival as a summer opera festival, it actually began in 1921 with a performance of Verdi's Aida in the 3,000 seat (plus 6,000 standing places) Arena Sferisterio, a huge neoclassical arena erected in the 1820s as a stadium for a form of handball called pallone al bracciale, a sort of game with ball and bangle. After a disastrous second year due to the performance of La Gioconda being rained out, (and except for a popular concert by Beniamino Gigli in 1929), the Festival did not begin again until 1967. The present layout of the arena allows for the seating of 3,500 to 4,500 people depending upon the specific sets.

By the late 1960s, the Festival was re-established, presenting mainly popular 19th and early 20th Century Italian opera, most of which were Macerata premieres. Within ten years, the repertory was gradually broadened to include more modern and foreign works but, for financial reasons, the emphasis was on the bigger crowd-pleasers with as many big name international opera singers as possible. In addition, many Regietheater-style productions were to be found such as film director Ken Russell's Madama Butterfly set in a brothel and a Franco Zeffirelli Carmen set in a motor cycle gang populated New York city.

With the decline in international singer participation as the 1990s progressed, the last decade has seen a return to popular Italian operas given spectacular productions.

From 2003 to 2005, the soprano Katia Ricciarelli was Artistic Director. But 2006 saw changes at the Sferisterio with the artistic direction being taken over by Pier Luigi Pizzi and a summer festival concept created. A common theme evolved in the selection of operas to be performed and, at the same time, the reconstruction of the stage was undertaken. The 2006 season acknowledged the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, with a production of The Magic Flute . Performances were moved to 9pm to take to allow the audience to enjoy the sunset. Seminars, discussions, and readings of literary works were added.

Venues include Teatro Lauro Rossi.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opera Australia</span> Principal opera company in Australia

Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, New South Wales, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House accompanied by the Opera Australia Orchestra runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent at the Arts Centre Melbourne, where it is accompanied by Orchestra Victoria. In 2004, the company gave 226 performances in its subscription seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, Victoria, attended by more than 294,000 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salzburg Festival</span> Annual music and drama festival held in Salzburg, Austria

The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer, for five weeks starting in late July, in Salzburg, Austria, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart's operas are a focus of the festival; one highlight is the annual performance of Hofmannsthal's play Jedermann (Everyman).

The Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) is an international music festival held in August of each year in Pesaro, Italy, the birthplace of the opera composer Gioachino Rossini. Its aim, in addition to studying the musical heritage of the composer, is to revive and perform his works in a unique setting that allows collaboration of scholars, artists, and audience. It is often simply referred to as the Pesaro Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glimmerglass Festival</span> Opera festival in Ostego County, New York

The Glimmerglass Festival is an American opera company. Founded in 1975 by Peter Macris, the Glimmerglass Festival presents an annual season of operas at the Alice Busch Opera Theater on Otsego Lake eight miles (13 km) north of Cooperstown, New York, United States. The summer-only season usually consists of four productions performed in rotating repertory. Glimmerglass is well known for producing new, lesser-known, and rare works, many of which in years past have been co-produced with the New York City Opera. It is the second-largest summer opera festival in the United States, currently led by artistic and general director Robert Ainsley, who succeeded Francesca Zambello in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Macerata</span> Comune in Marche, Italy

Macerata is a city and comune in central Italy, the county seat of the province of Macerata in the Marche region. It has a population of about 41,564.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sferisterio di Macerata</span>

The Sferisterio is an open-air stadium or sphaeristerium in Macerata, Italy.

The music of the Marche, a region of Italy, has been shaped by the fact that the entire region is a collection of small centers of population. There is no cultural giant to be found—no Florence or Naples—that might have shaped the cultural and musical expressions of the entire region. There is not a town in the region with more than 100,000 population, but there are 246 total towns, and they support no fewer than 113 theaters, a cultural building boom that started in the late 18th century. Historically, the entire area was home to a great number of monasteries and abbeys in the Middle Ages, institutions that had choirs and were active in the musical lives of the inhabitants. That period is still obscure and is currently the subject of musicological research. In the modern age, the region has a vibrant musical life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wexford Festival Opera</span> Opera festival in Ireland

Wexford Festival Opera is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in south-eastern Ireland during the months of October and November.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greek National Opera</span> Opera and ballet organization

The Greek National Opera is the country's state lyric opera company, located in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center at the south suburb of Athens, Kallithea. It is a public corporation under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Culture and administered by the Board of Trustees and its Artistic Director, currently George Koumedakis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arena di Verona Festival</span> Italian opera festival

Arena di Verona Festival is a summer festival of opera, located in the city of Verona, Italy. Since 1936, it has been organized under the auspices of an official body, first the Ente Autonomo Spettacoli Lirici Arena di Verona,, and then, following legislation in 1996 and 1998, the Ente Lirico Arena di Verona was transformed into a private foundation, the present-day Arena di Verona Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pier Luigi Pizzi</span> Italian opera director, set designer, and costume designer

Pier Luigi Pizzi is an Italian opera director, set and costume designer.

The Salzburg Easter Festival is a classical music and opera festival held every year over the extended week before Easter in Salzburg, Austria since 1967.

Fort Worth Opera is the oldest continually-performing opera company in the state of Texas and among the oldest in the United States, according to the company. While originally presenting operas one at a time over a fall/winter season, it changed to a "festival" format in 2007. In 2021, as the company celebrated its 75th anniversary season, Fort Worth Opera left the Festival format after fourteen years and returned to year-round programming.

Marco Tutino is an Italian composer. His emergence during the late 1970s was as the spearhead of an Italian Neo-Romantico group, founded with two other composers, Lorenzo Ferrero and Carlo Galante. He graduated from the Milan Conservatory, where he had studied flute and composition, in 1982.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giancarlo Monsalve</span> Chilean operatic tenor

Giancarlo Monsalve Leyton is a Chilean spinto tenor. He is the Cultural Ambassador of his home town Valparaíso, a UNESCO World Heritage site. He is known for his portrayal as Don José in Carmen, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana, the title role in Don Carlos, Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera, Prince Calaf in Turandot and Don Alvaro in La forza del destino

Luca Canonici is an Italian opera singer who has had an active career singing leading tenor roles both in Europe and his native Italy.

The Teatro Lirico Sperimentale di Spoleto was founded in 1947 by Adriano Belli, lawyer and musicologist, with the aim of helping young singers to start a career in opera, above all students who had already completed their singing studies and were gifted with artistic qualities, but had not yet made their artistic debut. The organization's offices are located in Spoleto, Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Volodymyr Sheiko</span> Ukrainian conductor (born 1962)

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Sheiko is a Ukrainian conductor, Honored Artist of Ukraine, People's Artist of Ukraine, the director of the Association "Music," and the chief conductor of the Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gustav Kuhn</span> Austrian conductor (born 1945)

Gustav Kuhn is an Austrian conductor and manager, also a composer, and a teacher and author. During his international conducting career, he founded the later "Accademia di Montegral" for young musicians and singers in 1987, held the artistic directorship of the Tiroler Festspiele Erl, which he founded, for over 20 years and was artistic director of the international singing competition "Neue Stimmen" of the Bertelsmann Foundation since the competition was founded in 1987. Due to the accusations against Kuhn, he ended the collaboration in September 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre of Croatia</span>

Theatre in Croatia refers to the history of the performing arts in Croatia, or theatrical performances written, acted and produced by Croatians. Croatian theatre generally falls into the Western theatre tradition, with influences especially from Italy, Germany, Austria and other European nations.

References