Puccini & Verdi
The beautiful St. Mark's Anglican Church in Florence offers a delightful setting for a musical spectacle that includes some of the best-loved operatic music of all time. Featuring the arias and duets of two greats of Italian opera – Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi – this series of concert extravaganzas includes music drawn from La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, La Traviata and Rigoletto. In addition, audience-goers will get the chance to hear some of the very best of the Neapolitan tradition of popular song with some well-known pieces that have been enjoyed throughout Italy – and the wider world – for decades.
Three operas written by Puccini open this intense musical journey. The programme begins with arias and duets drawn from the great composer's hugely successful La Bohème. The opera was first performed at Turin's Teatro Regio on 1 February 1896 and despite some misgivings among early critics, La Bohème went on to establish itself as a firm favourite among opera fans. Music from Madama Butterfly, also by Puccini – with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, the same pair who had collaborated with Puccini on La Bohème – follows. This passionate opera, set in Japan, was originally conceived in two acts and this is how it premiered at La Scala in Milan on 17 February 1904. Puccini revised it several times until a fifth version with three acts was produced in 1907, the so-called standard work which is still performed regularly around the world to this day. The Puccini section of the concert concludes with songs from Tosca, the three-act opera Puccini wrote after a French-language dramatic play, La Tosca from 1887. Illica and Giacosa again provided the Italian-language libretto for Puccini's version. It was first staged at Rome’s Teatro Costanzi on 14 January 1900 and includes some of Puccini's finest lyrical arias.
Puccini & Verdi at St. Mark's continues with music written by Verdi. This section of the programme opens with arias and duets from La Traviata, the stunning three-act opera which was adapted from an 1852 play by Alexandre Dumas fils called La Dame aux camélias. Verdi scored it to an Italian-language libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, a writer with whom he had previously collaborated on works such as Macbeth, Stiffelio and Attila among other productions. The melodically spectacular opera was first performed on 6 March 1853 at Venice's Teatro La Fenice. Afterwards, audiences will hear some of the best of Rigoletto, which Verdi wrote with Piave, a little earlier in their careers. This opera premiered at the same Venetian theatre on 11 March 1851 and was a box-office hit. It is widely considered to be one of Verdi's best works as the duets and arias chosen from it for this astounding concert series make abundantly clear.
With so many well-known and memorable tunes plus the chance to experience live Neapolitan-style singing, Puccini & Verdi at St. Mark's in Florence makes for a wonderful evening of entertainment.