The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (English: Florence Musical May) is an annual Italian arts festival in Florence, including a notable opera festival, under the auspices of the Opera di Firenze. The festival occurs between late April into June annually, typically with four operas.
In April 1933, on Luigi Ridolfi Vay da Verrazzano's idea, Vittorio Gui founded the festival, with the aim of presenting contemporary and forgotten operas in visually dramatic productions. It was the first music festival in Italy and the oldest in Europe after the Salzburg Festival. [1] The first opera presented was Verdi's early Nabucco , his early operas then being rarely staged. The first festival's success, which included two performances of Spontini's La Vestale with Rosa Ponselle, led to it becoming a biennial event in 1937 with the presentation of nine operas. After 1937, it became an annual festival, except during World War II. Performances took place in the Teatro Comunale and Piccolo Teatro, plus the Teatro della Pergola. A new opera house, the Teatro dell'Opera di Firenze, was inaugurated in 2011 and permanently replaced the former Teatro Comunale in 2014.
Former musical directors were Vittorio Gui (1928-1936), Mario Rossi (1937-1946), Bruno Bartoletti (1957-1964), and Riccardo Muti (1969-1981). Zubin Mehta became principal conductor in 1985, and now has the title of honorary conductor for life. In January 2016, the Opera di Firenze announced the appointment of Fabio Luisi as music director of the festival, the first conductor to hold that title, as of April 2018, with an initial contract of 5 years. [2] In July 2019, Luisi resigned as music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with immediate effect. [3] In July 2021, the festival announced the appointment of Daniele Gatti as its next principal conductor, effective March 2022, with an initial contract of 3 years. [4]
Sylvano Bussotti was an Italian composer of contemporary classical music, also a painter, set and costume designer, opera director and manager, writer and academic teacher. His compositions employ graphic notation, which has often created special problems of interpretation. He was known as a composer for the stage. His first opera was La Passion selon Sade, premiered in Palermo in 1965. Later operas and ballets were premiered at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze, Teatro Lirico di Milano, Teatro Regio di Torino and Piccola Scala di Milano, among others. He was artistic director of La Fenice in Venice, the Puccini Festival and the music section of the Venice Biennale. He taught internationally, for a decade at the Fiesole School of Music. He is regarded as a leading composer of Italy's avantgarde, and a Renaissance man with many talents who combined the arts expressively.
The Teatro Comunale di Bologna is an opera house in Bologna, Italy. Typically, it presents eight operas with six performances during its November to April season.
Fabio Vacchi is an Italian composer.
Vittorio Gui was an Italian conductor, composer, musicologist and critic.
Daniele Gatti is an Italian conductor. He is currently chief conductor of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, artistic advisor of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and music director of the Orchestra Mozart.
Fabio Luisi is an Italian conductor. He is currently principal conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and chief conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra.
Daniela Dessì was an Italian operatic soprano.
The Teatro Comunale di Firenze is an opera house in Florence, Italy. It was originally built as the open-air amphitheatre, the Politeama Fiorentino Vittorio Emanuele, which was inaugurated on 17 May 1862 with a production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and which seated 6,000 people. It became the focus on cultural life in the city. After closure caused by fire, it reopened in April 1864 and acquired a roof in 1882. By 1911 it had both electricity and heating.
Nir Kabaretti is an Israeli orchestra conductor.
Giacomo Prestia is an Italian operatic bass,
Mariella Adani is an Italian classical soprano who had an active career in operas, concerts, and recitals from the 1950s through the 1980s. She has sung under the musical direction of Vittorio Gui, Carlo Maria Giulini, Nino Sanzogno, Oliviero De Fabritiis, and Peter Maag and under the directors Sandro Bolchi, Franco Zeffirelli Luchino Visconti, and Walter Felsenstein. A light lyric soprano, she has particularly excelled in the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gioachino Rossini. She has also been admired for her performances in Baroque opera. Retired from the stage, she now devotes her time to teaching singing.
Bruno Bartoletti was an Italian operatic conductor. His active international career lasted from 1953 to 2007, and he specialized in the Italian repertory and contemporary works. He was particularly noted for his 51-year association with Lyric Opera of Chicago, as co-artistic director, artistic director, principal conductor, and artistic director emeritus. He also served as Artistic Director of both the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (1965–1973) and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (1985–1991), and as principal conductor of the Danish Royal Opera (1957–1960), in addition to frequent work as a guest conductor at various major opera houses.
Susanna Rigacci is a Swedish-born Italian singer/soprano.
Lucilla Udovich was an American soprano of Croatian ancestry.
Carmela Remigio is an Italian operatic soprano.
Luca Canonici is an Italian opera singer who has had an active career singing leading tenor roles both in Europe and his native Italy.
PierLuigi Samaritani was a renowned opera director/production designer, who began his career at a young age, working alongside some of the greatest names in theatre, opera and ballet, such as Lila de Nobili, Giancarlo Menotti, Franco Zeffirelli, Luciano Pavarotti, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolf Nureyev and many more. Samaritani had an enormous talent, which allowed him to take on all the roles the theatre, opera and ballet demanded, making sure to always be involved in all aspects of his productions even when delegating. From the creation of his "sketches" of the set, which were more like works of art in and of themselves to the smallest change in an extra’s costume, he was a true perfectionist preoccupied with every detail. His productions graced the stage of countless opera houses and theaters, amongst them La Scala di Milano, Teatro Regio of Parma, The Metropolitan Opera House, American Ballet Theatre and the Festival of Two Worlds at Spoleto, where he collaborated for many years, alongside his dear friend, Gian Carlo Menotti. The Teatro Lirico Sperimentale di Spoleto founded in 1947 in Spoleto, by Adriano Belli created a special award carrying the name of Pier Luigi Samaritani, awarded each year to the set designer with the best set design of the opera season.
Michele Mariotti, born in 1979 in Urbino, near Pesaro, is an Italian conductor, the direttore musicale since 2014 of Teatro Comunale di Bologna. A graduate in composition of Pesaro's Conservatorio Rossini, where he also studied orchestral conducting, he made his professional opera debut with Il barbiere di Siviglia in Salerno on Oct. 12, 2005. As of April 2017, his repertory included nine Rossini and eight Verdi operas, an extraordinary achievement, as well as symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner and Schubert, the Rossini Stabat mater, the Mozart Requiem and the Verdi Requiem.
Antonio Salvarezza was an Italian tenor.
Jolanda Meneguzzer was an Italian lyric soprano who made regular appearances at leading opera houses in the 1960s.
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