After 69 years, in an elegant and fascinating new staging, Giuseppe Verdi's “Ernani” returns to Cagliari, the third title of the opera and ballet season of the Teatro Lirico.
Saturday 9 April at 8.30 pm (turn A) the first show, with the famous four-part opera drama on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave.
The direction, with attention to the smallest details, is signed by Davide Garattini Raimondi who has already worked for the Teatro Lirico of Cagliari on the occasion of the performances of "The musical bee" by Da Ponte in the summer of 2017 and in the autumn of 2018 and for " The slave of Gomes ”which inaugurated the 2019 opera season.
The fascinating scenes and sumptuous costumes are by Domenico Franchi, while the refined lights are signed by Alessandro Verazzi.
Conducting the stable musical ensembles, orchestra and choir of the Lirico, is the maestro Giuseppe Finzi, an appreciated Apulian conductor who in 2017 directed, with great success with audiences and critics, the European premiere of Marco Tutino's "La Ciociara", and then return for an applauded concert series. The choir master is Giovanni Andreoli.
The work makes use of two prestigious cast who alternate in the performances: Marco Berti and Ragaa Eldin (Ernani), Devid Cecconi and Badral Chuluunbaatar (Don Carlo), Andrea Silvestrelli and Dongho Kim (Don Ruy Gómez de Silva), Marigona Qerkezi and Renata Campanella (Elvira), Giada Frasconi (Giovanna), Tatsuya Takahashi (Don Riccardo), Carlo Di Cristoforo (Jago).
Performed for the first time on 9 March 1844 at the Gran Teatro la Fenice in Venice, enjoying great success with the public, Ernani is considered the most beautiful early Verdi opera (fifth in order of composition), together with Nabucco and Macbeth, in which the violent pure force of revenge finds its maximum expression of intensity and vibration. The plot of the work, complex and articulated, tells of the reciprocated passion of Ernani, the bandit under whose disguise the noble Don Giovanni d'Aragona is hiding, for the young Elvira, betrothed to his old uncle Don Ruy Gomez de Silva and loved at the same time even by the king, Don Carlo, the future emperor. As in any self-respecting drama, the entry into play of jealousies, codes of honor, conspiracies and relentless vendettas will make the expected happy ending impossible and the melodrama takes place in the finale, touching even sensitive chords in the Risorgimento years.
The opera, with a total duration of approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes including the interval, is obviously represented in Italian, but, as is now tradition at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, it is performed with the aid of surtitles which, scrolling on the scenic arch of the proscenium, they favor the understanding of the libretto.
The performance for schools, which provides for the performance in a reduced form of the work lasting a total of about 60 minutes, is on Tuesday 12 April at 11 am. In the role of narrator, the actor from Cagliari Simeone Latini.
(Unioneonline / vl)