Teatro La Fenice di Venezia – Italian Opera Gala
A worthy conclusion to Abu Dhabi Classics’ first season: an Italian opera gala, presented by an outstanding ensemble of singers. Thrilling opera highlights – and not just Italian: Puccini, Verdi, Massenet, Bizet and other greats, performed in the Emirates Palace by Marcelo Álvarez, one of today’s leading lyric tenors, along with the superb Verdi baritone Franco Vassallo, and mezzo Julia Gertseva, celebrated throughout Europe as Carmen, a role she recently sang in Florence under Zubin Mehta.
Maestro Juraj Valcuha is one of today’s fastest rising conducting stars, within just two years notching up debuts with London’s Philharmonia, Dresden’s Staatskapelle, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, the Munich Philharmonic, Bavarian State Opera, Pittsburgh Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. And what of the Orchestra of La Fenice? It is intimately bound up with the history of opera itself – in the world premieres of such immortal works as Verdi’s Rigoletto and La Traviata. The podium of this orchestra, so stee -ped in the Italian tradition, has been graced by virtually every important conductor, including such legends as Strauss, Toscanini, Furtwängler,Stokowski, Mitropoulos, Reiner, Walter, Serafin, Karajan, Böhm and Bernstein.
