Georgia to become first country outside Italy to host Festival Verdi opera celebration
The Georgian edition of the Verdi festival will open with a Teatro Regio di Parma production of ‘Un ballo in maschera’. Photo: Teatro Regio di Parma.
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Two Georgian theatre venues will be the destination for the first-ever shows of Italy’s famed Festival Verdi outside the country, as international and local opera stars gear up to shine in the maiden Georgian edition of the annual event in August.
Announced a year ago, the deal between the major festival — hosting tens of thousands of visitors daily in its editions in Parma and Busseto — and the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theatre will see the celebration of the legendary composer exported from Italy.
In three shows, the occasion will see Georgia become the first non-Italian host of the festival originally founded by the estate of Giuseppe Verdi as part of the exclusive agreement.
A Teatro Regio di Parma production of Un ballo in maschera will open the event at the Tbilisi theatre on August 16, with the Georgian artists of the venue featuring in the roster.
Two Italian towns host the annual Festival Verdi for tens of thousands of daily visitors, making the event a major celebration of the famed composer:
Avete già visto nelle nuove bacheche del Teatro Regio di Parma le locandine delle opere del Festival Verdi? Troverete queste e altre illustrazioni originali ispirate a I due Foscari, Luisa Miller, Aida, Nabucco nella seconda edizione del FV Journal: https://t.co/jozo62EHPk pic.twitter.com/BGIaOyUdHX
— Teatro Regio Parma (@RegioParma) July 4, 2019
The show will see a new high in series of opera exchanges between Georgia and Italy, held over the recent years with the initiative of the Opera and Ballet Theatre artistic director Badri Maisuradze and his staff.
Involving joint productions and guest performers, the multi-year project has seen a revitalisation of the Tbilisi venue’s opera activities, with a record number of premieres held at the theatre over the last few seasons.
Moving away from the capital, the second festival show will see the first-ever opera performance held at the new Black Sea Arena on Georgia’s seaside on August 23.
A foreign staging team will bring a staging of Aida by the Arena di Verona amphitheatre in Italy to the stage of the modern performance location that has been hosting pop stars since its launch in 2016.
The date will also mean the maiden staging of the version of the Verdi classic, seen by the Georgian hosts of the festival as the largest opera production yet attempted in the country.
The Aida show will also be covered by visiting Italian media for a documentary project, to be broadcast later in 15 European countries.
The third and final date of the festival will see a selection of Georgian and foreign stars take to the same venue for a gala featuring fragments from Verdi works on the Black Sea shoreline.
The Festival Verdi was founded in Italy in the 1980s and is held in October each year since 2007 to celebrate the major legacy of the famed composer. Marking Verdi’s birthday, his two hometowns of Parma and Busseto invite music enthusiasts to attend shows of the event.
A new premiere of the opera classic Tosca will mark a return of Giacomo Puccini’s masterpiece to the Georgian scene next week, through a collaboration between the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theatre and the Festival Puccini in Torre del Lago, Italy.
The State Opera House of Georgia now has its own chamber music orchestra in Opera Camerata, a group involving the leading musical artists of the company and set to debut with a concert on Friday.
Tbilisi’s principal opera venue will premiere a brand-new staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo, marking the show’s return to Georgian audiences for the first time in 15 years this month.
The Festival Verdi, an acclaimed Italian opera event, will now also be hosted in Georgian cities, after the Tbilisi Opera and State Ballet Theatre signed a deal with Italy's celebrated Teatro Regio di Parma.
A festive premiere of opera classic La Traviata will mark a new four-year agenda of shows and activities at the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre in Georgia's capital today. The show of the 1853 classic by Giuseppe Verdi features Georgian opera stars Salome Jicia, Otar Jorjikia and Sulkhan Gvelesiani in the title roles.
Tbilisi's principal opera company has launched a brand-new program for professional exchange with some of the leading troupes around the world with a concert featuring Georgian and German stage artists on Thursday.
Georgian soprano Tsisana Giorgadze will debut on the world-famous stage of Teatro alla Scala in Milan next week when she steps into one of the principal roles of a Gianni Schicchi production staged by director Woody Allen.
A major premiere will bring talents of William Shakespeare and Giuseppe Verdi to the stage of the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theatre starting this weekend when the venue opens its hall for opera classic Macbeth.
Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theatre, the central venue for stage art in classical opera and ballet in Georgia, is celebrating its 170th anniversary, with a concert marking the milestone hosted in two bills over the past three days.
Daisi, one of the most popular productions of the professional Georgian opera scene and a major piece by the country's celebrated 20th century composer Zakaria Paliashvili, on Wednesday celebrated its first performance in Italy, when the show was staged at Catania's Teatro Massimo Bellini to mark the international Music Festival.