| Page Views: 4,223 Last Visit to Verona: August, 2006 | Operas in the Arena by Nemorino - last update: Feb 23, 2008 |
Aida, Carmen and Madama Butterfly On my recent visit to Verona I saw three open-air opera performances in the Arena di Verona: Verdi's Aida, Bizet's Carmen and Puccini's Madama Butterfly. What they had in common was that all three productions were by the same stage director, Franco Zeffirelli (born in 1923), who also designed the stage sets for all three. |
| Spectators in the Arena, with candles |
Zeffirelli has a reputation for being spectacular and sentimental. He is very popular with some audiences, but serious opera critics tend to pan his productions, calling them "sprawling" and "grotesquely overdone". He is often accused of creating "operatic excess" using "monumental sets and glitter". He likes to have his huge stage sets filled with hundreds of lavishly costumed extra players and dancers. Obviously he prefers to work at large opera venues where money is no object, such as the New York Met, the Vienna State Opera and London's Covent Garden -- and of course at the massive Arena di Verona.
Since the Arena is such an ideal venue for his kind of staging, the only surprising thing is that he didn't start earlier. His first opera production at the Arena wasn't until 1995. That was his Carmen production, which is the same one I saw in 2006.
Please see my Nightlife tips for further details on operas in the Arena.
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| Juliet's bed (plus film scene) |
Besides staging operas, Zeffirelli also has another connection with Verona, because in 1968 he made a highly successful film version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. At "Juliet's House" in Verona you can see her original, absolutely genuine bed. No, not the bed that anybody by that name might have used in the fourteenth century, but the one used for the love scene in Zeffirelli's film.
Since Verona is so proud of Romeo and Juliet, you might wonder why they don't perform operas about them. They have done so only twice in 85 years. In 1939 they did three performances of Giulietta e Romeo by a now-forgotten composer called Riccardo Zandonai (1883 - 1944), and in 1977 they did six performances of Roméo et Juliette by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818 - 1893).
Personally I rather like Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, and am listening to a recording of it as I write this, but he has unfortunately never been very popular in Italy, so they have never revived that 1977 production.
Update: To my surprise, they have actually scheduled two performances of Roméo et Juliette for the summer of 2008, on Saturday 16 August and Tuesday 19 August. (Maybe they read this page, LOL?)
They don't do ballets any more in the Arena, but they used to, and the one they did the most often in those years was Romeo e Giulietta by Sergej Prokofiev (1891 - 1953).
As on all my VirtualTourist pages, the photos here are all ones I have taken myself, so please don't use them for anything without asking me.
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Nemorino's Verona Travel Tips
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 Comments for Nemorino about Verona | | | | |
Redang Tue Oct 27, 2009 06:40 UTC
Another city I'd like to visit one day (and thanks for your comment/ratings on my Chinchón page) | BruceDunning Thu Jun 25, 2009 20:34 UTC
You present great detail of the place you visited, especially the arena and activities. Thank you | breughel Mon Jun 8, 2009 11:34 UTC
Emperor Augustus might have laughed, not Caligula! I'm pleased to come back on your Verona tips. I like the architecture here with similarities to Venice (less the tourist crowds). Good tip about the flashes; same for museums. | Cristian_Uluru Sat Apr 11, 2009 11:24 UTC
Fantastic page!! I hope to visit it this summer and to see Turandot or Carmen in the Arena! |
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