Opera in a prologue and three acts (1857)
New Production! Captured live at Opera di Roma’s season opening night, this eagerly anticipated new production of Verdi’s searing and intensely emotional opera is staged by nine-time Olivier Award-winning British director Richard Jones, with sets and costumes by Antony McDonald.
In 14th century Genoa, Boccanegra (Luca Salsi, one of the great Verdi baritones of our time) is a powerful man, but the secrets of his past haunt him: twenty-five years ago, his young lover died, and their daughter mysteriously vanished. Just as he thinks he might have found her, his enemies start to move against him.
Opera di Roma Music Director Michele Mariotti conducts the impressive score, one of the composer's favourites.
"In Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, love and power find themselves cruelly aligned against each other. On the one hand, music expresses a liquid, dark and elusive atmosphere just like the intrigues of power, on the other, through the isolated singing of a bassoon or the chromatic oscillations of the strings, it moves us. In the finale of the first act, for example, Verdi outlines a picture of unprecedented violence: a clash between patricians and plebeians which will be interrupted only by the tears of the doge who shouts 'peace' and 'love'. But in such a grim world there is no place for love or peace, except that which Simon Boccanegra will find in his final embrace with the sea, which will thus become his tomb."
- Michele Mariotti
