Michele Kalmandy

A young man ignorant of everything, including his own name, arrives at the Kingdom of the Holy Grail. Is he the ‘pure fool, enlightened by compassion’, who, it has been prophesied, will purify the realm? In his final music drama Parsifal, Wagner fashions the fear of the temptations and sinful desires into a tale of redemption. The score contrasts the sacred with the sensual, from the stark magnificence of the music for the procession to the Grail Hall in Act I to the richly orchestrated scene in which Kundry attempts to seduce Parsifal in Act II. There are sections of almost unearthly beauty such as the Act I Prologue and the closing scene of the opera, in which Parsifal reveals the Grail to the knights. OperaVision viewers discover András Almási-Tóth’s new production conducted by Balázs Kocsár live at its premiere on Good Friday at Hungarian State Opera.

The show will be seen in a new staging of the opera curated by the Modenese theater in coproduction with I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, directed by Cristina Pezzoli, the scenes by Giacomo Andrico, the costumes by Andrea Grazia and the lights by Mauro Panizza. He directs Pier Giorgio Morandi, at the helm of the Filarmonica of the Italian Opera Bruno Bartoletti and the choir of the Coro Lirico Association of Città di Piacenza - Teatro Comunale di Modena. Le Villi was the first work for the theater composed by Giacomo Puccini and constituted the decisive step towards his glory as an international opera artist. The opera, which lasted an hour and a half, was performed for the first time at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 31 May 1884. The Italian libretto by Ferdinando Fontana is based on the story Les Willis that Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr developed his turn from the ballet Giselle, music by Adolphe Adam on text by Théophile Gautier (1841).

In the bloody shadow of the French Revolution's reign of terror, a poet and a revolutionary vie for the affections of a noblewoman. Can the guillotine be stopped as their friendship turns to rivalry? In Andrea Chénier, the poet’s fate transcends actual events, telling the story of a tragic love triangle in which the lives of the protagonists are subject to the forces of history, betrayal and amorous passion. Along the way, Umberto Giordano's music, full of elegant aristocratic dances and popular revolutionary songs, perfectly captures the atmosphere of Paris before and during the French Revolution. Winner of the 2016 International Opera Award for Young Director, Fabio Ceresa returns to the Erkel Theatre for this impressive period production.