From 11 to 23 August in Pesaro: Semiramide,
L’equivoco stravagante, and Demetrio e Polibio
This summer the Rossini Opera Festival will be reaching its fortieth edition. Created in 1980, through the years the Festival has rediscovered the complete opera production of Gioachino Rossini, a composer who had been known for a long time only for his opere buffe. Thanks to the support of the musicologists from the Fondazione Rossini, the ROF has recovered and offered some thirty masterpieces to opera lovers worldwide. These masterpieces, presented in their original edition, are mainly opere serie that had been completely forgotten by opera houses.
The fortieth edition will be held in Pesaro from 11 to 23 August. There will be two new productions: Semiramide, conducted by Michele Mariotti and staged by Graham Vick; L’equivoco stravagante, conducted by Carlo Rizzi and directed by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier. A previous production of the rarely performed Demetrio e Polibio, conducted by Paolo Arrivabeni and staged by Davide Livermore, is also presented by the Festival. The Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai will perform in Semiramide and L’equivoco stravagante together with the Teatro Ventidio Basso Chorus; the Filarmonica G. Rossini will perform in Demetrio e Polibio alongside the Teatro della Fortuna “M. Agostini” Chorus.
The cast of Semiramide is led by Salome Jicia in the title role, alongside Varduhi Abrahamyan (Arsace), Nahuel Di Pierro (Assur), Antonino Siragusa (Idreno), Martiniana Antonie (Azema), Carlo Cigni (Oroe), Alessandro Luciano (Mitrane), Sergey Artamonov (L’ombra di Nino).
Jessica Pratt (Lisinga), Cecilia Molinari (Demetrio – Siveno), Juan Francisco Gatell (Demetrio – Eumene) and Riccardo Fassi (Polibio) will perform Demetrio e Polibio.
The cast of L’equivoco stravagante includes Teresa Iervolino (Ernestina), Paolo Bordogna (Gamberotto), Davide Luciano (Buralicchio), Pavel Kolgatin (Ermanno), Claudia Muschio (Rosalia) and Manuel Amati (Frontino).
The Festival’s program also includes Il Viaggio a Reims performed by the students of the Accademia Rossiniana “Alberto Zedda”; the Gala ROF XL with some of today’s most important interpreters of Rossini (Juan Diego Flórez, Lawrence Brownlee, Angela Meade, Erwin Schrott, Nicola Alaimo, Paolo Bordogna, Michele Pertusi…); the Cantata La Riconoscenza; the Soirées Musicales in the chamber version by Fabio Maestri; two lyric Concerts with the Orchestra Snfonica G. Rossini (Varduhi Abrahmyan and Jessica Pratt; Anna Goryachova and Simone Alberghini); two Belcanto Concerts (Angela Meade; Antonino Siragusa); the new appointment with Rossinimania, with the vocal group Italian Harmonists.
