Arrigo Boito

Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher’s bold new production probes the psychological underpinnings of Verdi’s dynamic setting of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. At the helm of this performance is riveting conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who brings out all the cascading emotions in Verdi’s turbulent score. Aleksandrs Antonenko is the Moor Otello, the triumphant general of the Venetian army who is ultimately brought down by the sly insinuations of his friend Iago (Željko Lučić). Sonya Yoncheva continues to win fans as Desdemona, Otello’s faithful and long-suffering wife. With Günther Groissböck as Lodovico and Dimitri Pittas as Cassio.

Desdemona in Verdi's Otello was a career role for soprano Renata Tebaldi, from her first operatic performance outside of Italy to her final appearance on the opera stage. Between those landmarks she performed the role nearly 100 times all over the world and made studio audio recordings that became reference recordings for the role. This 1962 production with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Giuseppe Patane was planned as a media event from the outset and blessedly captures a consummate artist in a signature role at the peak of her gifts.

In England, at Windsor during the reign of Henry IV of England (1399–1413). Sir John Falstaff, also known as ‘Il Pancione’ (the Potbelly), has two identical love letters sent out, one to Meg Page and the other to Alice Ford, then delivers a sarcastic lecture on honour to his servants Bardolfo and Pistola. In Ford’s garden, his wife Alice and her friend Meg notice the similarity between Falstaff’s letters and decide to take revenge on him by pretending that Alice is receiving him at home whilst Ford is away. ‘Falstaff’ is a three-act opera buffa by Giuseppe Verdi, with a libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare’s ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ and ‘Henry IV’, Parts I and II. It premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala in Milan and on 18 April 1894 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. It was the last opera composed by the composer, then aged 80. Taken from the 27-opera Verdi box set “Tutto Verdi”. Recorded live at the Teatro Regio in Parma on 10, 12, 15, 22 and 25 October 2011.

As the saying goes, “Shakespeare invented him, Verdi made him immortal” – and, surely, it was Bryn Terfel who defined him. Terfel first sung Falstaff in 1999, and in 2021, the bass-baritone superstar returns once more to the role at Grange Park Opera. In a production by Stephen Medcalf first shown in the 17th century Farnese theatre in Parma in 2011 with designs that are truly Falstaffian including sensational backcloths by Italian supremo Rinaldo Rinaldi.

It is to composer and librettist Arrigo Boito and his constant pestering of the octogenarian Verdi that there remained within him one last great comedy fighting to get out that we owe this absolute miracle of an opera. Produced in 1893 as Verdi turned 80 there is much in this masterpiece that can be identified as a modernist neoclassical work. The use of short motifs instead of long arioso melodic lines, the spry and reduced orchestral textures and the lack of a single 'stand and deliver' dramatic declamatory aria all serve to make this more of a 20th century work than an example of 19th century late-Romanticism.

A requiem inspired by the death, on May 22, 1873, of the Italian poet and writer Alessandro Manzoni, author of the novel “The Betrothal”. Giuseppe Verdi’s “Messa da Requiem” (more commonly known as the “Verdi Requiem”) is a requiem mass for soloists (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and bass), double choir, and orchestra, premiered on May 22, 1874, at the Church of San Marco in Milan. The Requiem is Verdi’s only major composition not intended for the opera. From the 27-opera Verdi box set “Tutto Verdi.” Recorded live at the Teatro Farnese in Parma on October 8, 2011.

Based on Shakespeare's play, Verdi's opera depicts the devastating effects of jealousy, "...the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds upon". Believing Otello has promoted the fast-rising Cassio over himself, Iago plots to destroy both Cassio and Otello. Iago convinces the jealous Otello that his beautiful wife Desdemona is unfaithful, and that Cassio is her lover. Jealousy is followed by tragedy, then retribution, "Has Heaven no more thunderbolts?"

In the 14th century, Genoa was torn apart by strife between the patricians and the plebeians. The sailor Simon Boccanegra and his lover Maria Fiesco bore the brunt of these internal conflicts: Maria’s father was none other than the city’s doge, the patrician Jacopo Fiesco. When he learnt that Maria had borne Simon a child, he placed his daughter under house arrest. The two lovers had entrusted their daughter to an elderly servant, but she died, and the child mysteriously disappeared. ‘Simon Boccanegra’ is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave based on a play by Antonio García Gutiérrez. The first version premiered on 12 March 1857 at La Fenice in Venice. A second version, with a libretto revised by Arrigo Boito, premiered 24 years later, on 24 March 1881, at La Scala in Milan. From the box set of 27 Verdi operas, “Tutto Verdi”. Recorded live at the Teatro Regio in Parma on 23, 25 and 28 March 2010.