Riccardo Zandonai: FRANCESCA DA RIMINI (Official trailer)

After its opera hit DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE, the successful team around Christof Loy and Sara Jakubiak now presents another musical rarity of the 20th century: Riccardo Zandonai's FRANCESCA DA RIMINI.

It is one of the great tragic lovers in world history: Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, whole armies of artists were inspired to deal with the material, among them Gabriele d'Annunzio, whose "Poem of Blood and Voluptuousness", which premiered in 1901 and was soon banned as a scandalous piece, also aroused the interest of the young composer Riccardo Zandonai.

His opera centres on three brothers from the Malatesta family who fall in love with the same woman. Francesca appears as their seductress and victim of family political intrigues at the same time. Zandonai wrote a gripping musical drama here between Tristan longing and brutal fantasies of violence. The composer, who was regarded as Puccini's successor, combines the lyricism of the Italian bel canto tradition with the harshness of contemporary verismo, integrates impressionistic richness of tone colour and at the same time makes the models Wagner and Strauss audible.

Conductor: Ivan Repušić
Stage Director: Christof Loy
Set design: Johannes Leiacker
Costume design: Klaus Bruns
Light design: Olaf Winter
Online premiere: 14 Mar 2021
Audience premiere: 19 May 2023

With Sara Jakubiak, Lexi Hutton, Samuel Dale Johnson, Ivan Inverardi, Jonathan Tetelman, Charles Workman, Meechot Marrero, Elisa Verzier, Arianna Manganello, Karis Tucker, Irene Roberts, Thomas Cilluffo, Dean Murphy, Patrick Cook, Artur Garbas sowie Jan Gerrit Brüggemann, Farouk El-Khalili, Hanno Jusek, Marcus Mundus, Emiliano Passaro, Andrea Spartà, Koray Tuna, Benjamin Werth, Maximilian Reisinger, Nicolas Franciscus, Kay Bretschneider, Paul Krügener, Lukas Lehner, Cristiano Afferi, Pablo Nina Toculescu, Extras, Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Video by Chris and the FATSOX

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