South America - International promotion of Festival Verdi 2019

I due Foscari, Aida, Luisa Miller, and Nabucco are the programmed operas of the 19th edition of Festival Verdi, held from September 26^th to October 20^th, 2019 and performed at the Teatro Regio di Parma, the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi di Busseto and, this year for the first time, the monumental XIII century Chiesa di San Francesco del Prato. This church in the heart of the city, which had been transformed into a prison for over 200 years before being abandoned, is today undergoing full restoration, and the festival will give the opportunity to rediscover it.

4 operas and 4 premieres over 4 consecutive days, with 3 new productions in 3 different locations, 4 orchestras, 2 choruses, 3 commissions on debut, concerts, recitals, meetings, 22 events with 66 functions spanning 25 days of festivities that revolve around the 206th birthday of Giuseppe Verdi on 10 October. Also intertwined are the 100 free-entry events of Verdi Off, the side festival in its fourth edition. Starting on 21 September, it will take the festival to the streets, the squares, into homes, the prisons, and the children’s hospital, exciting and embracing everyone in the atmosphere of the festival that celebrates Giuseppe Verdi in many different ways in Parma and Busseto, and throughout the region.

Leo Muscato stages the inaugural opera, I due Foscari, conducted by Paolo Arrivabeni, at the Teatro Regio di Parma; the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi di Busseto sees Aida in Franco Zeffirelli’s great traditional style, conducted by Michelangelo Mazza; with Roberto Abbado conducting, Lev Dodin, one of the great masters of Russian theatre, stages Luisa Miller inside the Chiesa di San Francesco del Prato whilst under restoration; Nabucco at the Teatro Regio debuts the creative project of Ricci/Forte, a pairing that has received multiple awards in contemporary theatre, with conduction by Francesco Ivan Ciampa.
Also programmed is the choral symphonic concert conducted by Roberto Abbado, the gala with Mariella Devia and Leo Nucci, aperitive concerts in the luxurious rooms of the Palazzo Ducale del Giardino, choral concerts in the Ridotto at the Teatro Regio, performances for children, open rehearsals, and meetings.

«I like to think of Festival Verdi 2019 as the beginning of a new path» declares Anna Maria Meo. «The dawning of a journey that will peak in the special year of 2020, when Parma becomes the Italian Capital of Culture, and in which the Theatre Season and the Festival will blend almost seamlessly into a calendar of great appeal, and which will conclude in 2021 with a great interdisciplinary project that will unite the many and different languages of the stage. A new triennial period of challenges and change, of new ideas, and new approaches which are constantly necessary to ensure the Festival does not rest on its formula for success, but continues to maintain the dynamic vitality of the project. In other words, a building site that’s in continual evolution».

The international promotion of Festival Verdi 2019 is realized by Teatro Regio di Parma in collaboration with Enit, Italian Cultural Institutes, the Emilia-Romagna Region Culture Dept, the department of Turismo e Commercio of the Municipality of Parma, with tour operator partner Parma Incoming.

General director of the Teatro Regio di Parma Anna Maria Meo will introduce the Festival in Buenos Aires (February 26^th), Rio de Janeiro (February 28^th), Lima (March 4^th), Mexico City (March 6^th), São Paulo (March 11^th).

The meetings are for tour and cultural operators and in general for opera fans.

• Festival Verdi 2019
• Festival Verdi 2019 main events (2.99 MB)
• Festival Verdi Opera tour
• Teatro Regio di Parma

The exclusive image of the Festival is a portrait of Giuseppe Verdi in pencil by Renato Guttuso dating from the 1960s, donated to the Teatro Regio di Parma by Archivio storico Bocchi and conceded by Fabio Carapezza Guttuso ©Renato Guttuso by SIAE 2019.