Tuesday October 19 2021, at 20 the master Riccardo Frizza on the podium of the Teatro del Maggio for the first performance of Rigoletto, directed by Davide Livermore. This edition of Rigoletto was staged, behind closed doors, on 23 February 2021 for the video recording still available on the ItsArt digital platform. For maestro Riccardo Frizza, after conducting in February, these performances mark his return to the podium of the Theater in front of the Florentine public 10 years after the last time, when he directed the Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti in January 2011. After the very recent success of The Traviata, Davide Livermore therefore also signs the second direction of the three works of the “Popular Trilogy”. These two, for the Verdi triptych, again with the direction entrusted to Livermore, will also be accompanied by The Troubadour, expected in the 2022/23 season. The Maggio Choir is directed by Lorenzo Fratini. Two other shows are scheduled: Friday 22 October, again at 8 pm and Sunday 24 October at 3:30 pm.

Rigoletto will see on stage a cast of great prestige gathered by the casting manager of the Maggio Toni Gradsack: in the role of the protagonist Rigoletto the baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat, back in May after the recitation of The force of Destiny by Giuseppe Verdi, programmed as part of the 83rd Festival of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under the direction of Zubin Mehta and directed by Carlus Padrissa. The baritone, now an acclaimed and acclaimed Verdi voice, has often interpreted Rigoletto since his debut in Italy at the San Carlo in Naples and then at the Arena in Verona, at the Carlo Felice in Genoa, in Parma, Palermo, at the Verdi in Salerno, at the Regio of Turin, Treviso, Macerata. “It is an important and difficult role but one that I sing without effort and that I would always like to sing” says Amartuvshin Enkhbat who with Piero Pretti (the two were engaged together in Parma until 15 October in A masked ball) and Nadine Sierra will also play the role at the Teatro alla Scala in June 2022. The role of her daughter, Gilda, will instead be interpreted by the soprano Mariangela Sicily. After the concert directed by Michele Mariotti dedicated to the victims of the Bataclan in Paris in 2014, he is making his operatic debut on the Maggio stage. Winner of the Operalia award, she is permanently present on the billboards of the most important international theaters. The tenor Piero Pretti, which returns to the Teatro del Maggio later The Troubadour Staged in September 2018, directed by Fabio Luisi, he will be engaged in the role of the Duke of Mantua. In Pretti’s repertoire the role played in theaters all over the world appears very frequently, so much so that it can be considered one of his workhorses. The three main roles will be joined by the bass Alessio Cacciamani (Sparafucile), heard in Maggio already in Othello And Nabucco and the mezzo-soprano Caterina Piva formed at the Accademia della Scala who will play Maddalena just after having supported the role of Flora in the very recent Traviata directed by Zubin Mehta. Previously the Florentine public learned to know her in Siberia (Nikona) by Giordano, and before that in Nabucco (Fenena) and Othello (Emilia). The other characters will be played by the artists trained at the Accademia del Maggio valentina corò, Roman Lyulkin, Francesco Samuele Venuti, Antonio Garés, Davide Piva, Marilena Ruta, Amin Ahangaran And Caterina Meldolesi. The scenes are from Giò Forma, Gianluca Falaschi he signs the costumes while the lights and the video sector are respectively handled by Antonio Castro And D-wok.

According to the master Riccardo Frizza “The opera is one of the most important, not only in the Verdi repertoire, but in nineteenth-century Italian melodrama in general. Verdi finally abandons the political themes of his previous operas to get closer to something more popular, much closer to the feelings of the people and the public; a family drama, the relationship between father and daughter and between the figure of the powerful and those who are the humblest and most exploited people: for this reason Verdi with Rigoletto leaves a fundamental trace, will later come with Traviata“.

Speaking of the new staging, never seen yet by the audience in the hall while it is available in video on the ItsArt platform, according to the director Davide Livermore the theme of the curse is the heart of the show: “Giuseppe Verdi wanted this opera wanted The curse: the two times in which a curse is composed are told in an extraordinary way; the moment in which it is launched and the moment in which it then comes true. This is also the case in Rigoletto: the theme of the curse we hear for the first time in the prelude of the work and then hear it in the final, devastating, which will finally see it accomplished. This is undoubtedly one of the moments that Verdi most relates to Victor Hugo, the author of Le roi s’amuse, described here wonderfully in music also by Francesco Maria Piave, who, as always, offers an extraordinary translation that is perfectly suited to Verdi’s poetics ”.

Further information: www.maggiofiorentino.com