Rosetta Cucchi

Marco Tutino's opera, produced for the 2023 Wexford Festival Opera, tells the story of a mother and daughter fleeing the chaos and atrocities of the Second World War in Italy. It's a story inspired by Alberto Moravia's novel which was already adapted for the cinema by Vittorio De Sica in 1960, bagging Sophia Loren an Academy Award for her starring performance. La Ciociara, performed here on an Irish festival stage, offers a poignant operatic experience with powerful themes that resonate through time.

Based on Rosetta Cucchi’s new staging of Umberto Giordano's Fedora at Teatro Carlo Felice, Ipanov bears witness to incessant survivor guilt, unable to escape restless remembrances of his ill-fated family and strongest regrets – betrayal, disgrace, loss and abandonment.

Building on the success of Cavalleria rusticana, Pietro Mascagni’s commedia lirica L’amico Fritz was given seven encores and thirty-five curtain calls at its premiere in Rome in 1891. Considered by critics to be one of Mascagni’s best operas, the story is that of a love triangle involving the wealthy Fritz Kobus and Suzel, daughter of one of his tenants, who together sing the famous ‘Cherry Duet’ in Act II. Returning to the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence for the first time since 1941, this production was acclaimed for its superb cast and astonishingly effective modern setting.