The Macaluso Sisters

Franco scaldati - died in 2013 - was one of the most important autors of italian theatre plays, Maresco describes his role in the cultural and social field. Through his opera we can observe Italy from another point of view.

Three prostitutes live in the wasteland by the sea, where a village of outcasts has emerged. It is life in a harsh reality of poverty, ignorance, and violence. And the only ray of light in their lives is Arturo, whom they care for together. The young man is a weak-minded child in an adult body. His mother died in childbirth, and the women took him into their care as a newborn. What will the fate of this young man be in an environment he has not chosen and cannot choose because of his disability?

Shut inside their cars, two women face off in a silent duel that is fought out in the intimate violence of their stares. A wholly female duel punctuated by the refusal to drink, eat and sleep; more obstinate than the sun of Palermo and more stubborn than the ferocity of the men who surround them. For, as in every duel, it is a question of life or death... It’s a Sunday afternoon. The sirocco is blowing pitilessly in Palermo when Rosa and Clara lose their way in the streets of the city and end up in a sort of alley: Via Castellana Bandiera. At the same moment, another car driven by Samira, crammed with members of the Calafiore family, arrives from the opposite direction and enters the same street.

This occasionally off-the-wall but finely sung and colourfully staged La Cenerentola was Rome Opera’s first foray into the media market, shown on television and in cinemas across Italy in 2016. It clearly had the funding. Emma Dante’s production will not have come cheap – Vanessa Sannino’s costumes are a particular feature – nor would the singers, given that this is as good a Cenerentola cast as any international house might currently muster.

Richard Strauss' Salome opens the 87th Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival. Alexander Soddy conducts; Emma Dante directs the new production. Lidia Fridman is Salome, Anna Maria Chiuri is Herodias, and Nikolai Schukoff plays Herod.

From the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, The Fiery Angel, with music by Sergei Prokofiev. Orchestra and choir of the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, conducted by Alejo Pérez in a visionary production by Emma Dante. Ewa Vesin gives voice to Renata and her tragic obsession with Madiel, her guardian angel.

Dialogues of the Carmelites. Opera in three acts and twelve scenes by Francis Poulenc, based on the play by Georges Bernanos. Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma conducted by Michele Mariotti, directed by Emma Dante.

Michele Mariotti conducts Gioachino Rossini’s *Tancredi* for the first time. Carlo Vistoli takes on the title role. Joining him on stage are Martina Russomanno, Antonino Siragusa, and Luca Tittoto. Directed by Emma Dante, with set design by Carmine Maringola. The Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.

Sergey Prokofiev's operatic tragedy The Fiery Angel was never performed in the composers lifetime the musics brittle energy, drama and eloquent lyrical tenderness would re-emerge in his Third Symphony. The narrative focuses relentlessly on Renata, who is haunted by an angel who turns out to be the devil. Director Emma Dante describes the opera as an explosive mix of fantastical realism and endless confusion of nightmares, madness, sexual impulses and cultural clashes, and this Teatro dellOpera di Roma production was acclaimed as a presentation of Prokofievs masterpiece which sparkles in all its grotesque glory (operawire.com)

All warmth springs from woman, All light from love does flow – Truly, only the heat of a virgin's body can ignite your fires.

The acclaimed Italian director, Emma Dante, presents a powerful, barbaric and at time frenzied Macbeth with great attention to detail. Staged and filmed in Italy's largest theatre, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Sicily, this production captures remarkable performances by the Italian soprano Anna Pirozzi as Lady Macbeth, the renowned Verdi specialist, baritone Roberto Frontali, in one of his signature roles, and the rising star, Croatian bass-baritone Marko Mimica as Banco (Banquo). The conductor, Gabriele Ferro, has opted to use the 1865 Paris version of the score, sung in Italian and without the ballets, for a production that received generous praise in Palermo and on tour.

A dramma giocoso at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, set to music by Gioachino Rossini. Libretto by Jacopo Ferretti based on the French libretto by Etienne for Isouard's Cendrillon.

John Turturro goes back to the land of his ancestors.

Two one-act operas adapted by Emma Dante, conducted by Michele Mariotti. Two ways of understanding love and exploring the boundaries between reason and madness. The protagonists embody the pain of abandonment and the driving force behind the tragedy: for love, people commit extreme acts, just as the theatrical gesture within a grand opera is extreme.