Festival Verdi 2016, Parma on stage

Looking forward with great excitement to the most important musical event of the year, the 2016 edition of Festival Verdi, the beautiful city of Parma is already celebrating and is preparing to welcome visitors from all over the world. Never before has the programme been so rich and varied, not only for the Festival itself but for all the other related activities.

Shop windows decorated on a Verdi theme, menus which bring to mind the great composer, gadgets and promotional material for tourists all with the background soundtrack from the project “Music in the streets” which accompanies visitors as they walk through the historical centre of town. Until the 30 October 2016 there will be over 50 events and 100 appointments, most of them open to the public with free entrance, which will satisfy the tastes of lovers of opera, music, theatre, cinema, art, photography and top quality food and wine.

Everything in Parma and its surroundings is centred on Verdi and his music during this period; from the centre of town to the depths of the countryside, from public places to private houses everywhere one can hear the echo of Verdi’s best loved arias.  Proof of this can be seen in the rich programme of Verdi events which starts with the original initiative of 27 volte Verdi: from the windows of the Ridotto of the Teatro Regio di Parma every lunchtime a Verdi aria will be performed by the students of the “Arrigo Boito” Conservatoire of Music in Parma accompanied at the piano.

The Maestro’s compositions take pride of place along Parma’s streets thanks to the event Verdi Band! which will see lively performances by the bands of the city and the province. Those of a romantic bent can take a carriage ride accompanied by a liveried coachman… and relive the past! All in all, a city to be experienced during the most important festival of the year, a grand celebration for everyone where music lovers from all over the world can be seen and heard: from Australia, Taiwan, Northern Europe, the USA, Canada and France amongst others. The 2016 Festival Verdi  presents exciting shows, concerts, meetings and study days in the places which best ‘talk’ of the Maestro such as the Teatro Regio, the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi in Busseto and from this year and for the next three years the Teatro Farnese, a true architectural jewel in Parma’s crown.

The Festival opens on the 1 October at the Teatro Regio with a new production of Don Carlo directed by Cesare Lievi with Michele Pertusi, José Bros, Vladimir Stoyanov, Ievghen Orlov and Serena Farnocchia. The second opera of this season is one of the most popular Verdi operas, Il Trovatore in a new production by Elisabetta Courir, with sets by Marco Rosso (who recently won the Ubu prize for Ronconi’s Lehman Trilogy) and directed by Massimo Zanetti performed by George Petean, Dinara Alieva, Enkeledja Shkosa, and Murat Karahan. The Teatro Farnese will see a Giovanna d’Arco designed by the exciting English director Peter Greenaway and his wife Saskia Boddeke and will also be the setting for Around Verdi where the music of Verdi will meet electronic music, Uri Caine’s jazz, the compositions of Fabien Levy, Vinicio Capossela and the performances of Ugo Pagliai and Lenz.

The Festival Verdi also encourages young talent: the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi in Busseto has renewed its collaboration with the Opera school of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and with the International Competition for Verdi Voices to produce I Masnadieri.  The young artists will not be alone on stage because with VerdiYoung the Festival continues with shows, laboratories and educational activities for schools, for families, for the university and local associations from which this territory draws the vital lymph which is the passion for Verdi and his immortal works.