Giovanni Sala

The ground-breaking and award-winning production of Giuseppe Verdi’s tense moral drama Stiffelio staged by famous opera director Graham Vick. Opera in three acts (1850) Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave after Le Pasteur, ou l’Évangile et le Foyer by Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois Graham Vick’s innovative staging of the ‘most unjustly neglected of Verdi’s operas', Stiffelio, was presented with a Special Award at the 37th 'Franco Abbiati' Music Critics' Prize (2018) for the director's unique theatricality and the unprecedented level of audience involvement. Performed at the Teatro Farnese on four mobile platforms, the audience was free to move around the auditorium and choose their own vantage points, mingling with actors, chorus members and cameramen. The Italian tenor, Luciano Ganci (Stiffelio), and the Mexican soprano, Maria Katzarava (Lina), deliver tense and dramatic performances in what was the highlight of the 2017 Festival Verdi in Parma.

A handsome prince falls in love with an abducted princess. Armed with musical instruments, he and his singing sidekick mount a rescue mission that tests their commitment to truth, love and humanity itself. Staging a mass revolt against the powers that be, British director Graham Vick has enlisted a good hundred locals and immigrants as demonstrators occupying makeshift camps on the flanks of Sferisterio's impressive open air stage. Sung in simple, modern Italian, Mozart's famous Singspiel takes on a liveliness and spunk that stresses the opera's folk roots and conveys the sense that the action is unfolding around us today.