The Teatro della Pergola is an historic opera house in Florence, Italy. It is located in the centre of the city on the Via della Pergola, from which the theatre takes its name. It was built in 1656 under the patronage of Cardinal Gian Carlo de' Medici to designs by the architect Ferdinando Tacca, son of the sculptor Pietro Tacca; its inaugural production was the opera buffa, Il potestà di Colognole by Jacopo Melani. The opera house, the first to be built with superposed tiers of boxes rather than raked semi-circular seating in the Roman fashion, is considered to be the oldest in Italy, having occupied the same site for more than 350 years.
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.
The Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi is an opera house located in Trieste, Italy and named after the composer Giuseppe Verdi. Privately constructed, it was inaugurated as the Teatro Nuovo to replace the smaller 800-seat "Cesareo Regio Teatro di San Pietro" on 21 April 1801 with a performance of Johann Simon Mayr's Ginevra di Scozia. Initially, the Nuovo had 1,400 seats. In 1821, it became known as the Teatro Grande.
The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino 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.
Ettore Bastianini was an Italian operatic baritone who was particularly associated with the operas of the bel canto tradition.
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.
Daniel Oren is an Israeli conductor.
Pier Miranda Ferraro was an Italian operatic tenor who had an active international opera career from 1951 through 1981. He particularly excelled in the dramatic Italian repertoire with his signature role being the title role in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Otello. Other important roles in his performance repertoire included Radames in Verdi's Aida, Alvaro in La Forza del Destino, and des Grieux in Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut. He also found success in the German repertoire portraying Wagnerian heroes. Although he was a gifted singer and had a highly impressive list of performance credits, he never achieved the international recognition enjoyed by his most important contemporaries, such as Franco Corelli or Mario Del Monaco. After retiring from the opera stage in 1981 he took up a second highly successful career as a voice teacher.
Tirelli Costumi Roma is a Rome-based costume house, which makes and supplies period costumes to motion picture productions. It has been sited, along with Costumi d'Arte and Peruzzi, as one of the best resources for 18th-century costumes.
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.
Štefan Margita is a Slovak opera singer who has had an active international career since 1981. He began his career singing mostly roles from the lyric tenor repertoire but in recent years he has tackled a number of dramatic tenor roles. His career has taken him to the stages of many of the world's best opera houses, including La Scala, the Royal Opera, London, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Liceu, and the Opéra Bastille. Margita has had his debut performance at the Metropolitan Opera in November 2009 as Luka Kuzmič in Leoš Janáček's From the House of the Dead.
Giacomo Vaghi was an Italian opera singer who had an active international career from 1925-1956. Along with Tancredi Pasero and Ezio Pinza, he was one of the leading operatic basses of his generation. He possessed a rich voice with a dark timbre that drew him particular acclaim in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. He appears on several complete opera recordings made with EMI Classics and Cetra Records.
Corrado Zambelli was an Italian classical bass who had an active international singing career in operas and concerts from the 1920s through the 1950s. He appears on several complete opera recordings, including Otello and Carmen for His Master's Voice; and Ernani, Il trovatore, La favorite, and La Gioconda for Columbia Records.
Stefan Anton Reck is a German orchestra conductor and painter. He was born on 26 April 1960 in Baden-Baden, Germany.
Luca Canonici is an Italian opera singer who has had an active career singing leading tenor roles both in Europe and his native Italy.
Lorenzo Mariani is a stage director of opera in Italy, the United States, Israel, Finland, and across the world. From 2005 to 2012 Mariani has been artistic director of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo. The Teatro Massimo is the largest theatre in 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.
Pietro Veneri is an Italian conductor, and professor of conducting at the Conservatorio Arrigo Boito in Parma.
Didone abbandonata is a setting by Leonardo Vinci of the libretto Didone abbandonata by Metastasio first set to music by Domenico Sarro in 1724. It was premiered at the Teatro delle Dame for the 1726 Carnival season in Rome.
Fabio Sartori is an Italian operatic tenor. He is particularly known for his interpretations of Italian roles by Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini and of the Verismo.
