Teatro Regio di Parma and Teatro Comunale di Ferrara on OperaVision
Exactly one month after its debut at the Teatro Regio di Parma, Il matrimonio segreto, dramma giocoso in two acts by Domenico Cimarosa, is streamed on OperaVision, the free streaming platform supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.
The opera is streamed on March 10 at 19h00 CET and will be available until September 10.
It is a new staging by Teatro Regio di Parma in co-production with Ópera de Tenerife and Teatro Massimo di Palermo, born within Opera (e)Studio, the Ópera de Tenerife project that offers new generations of opera singers the opportunity to enter the international scene. The opera features stage direction by Roberto Catalano and musical direction by Davide Levi.
Il matrimonio segreto is Domenico Cimarosa’s best-known opera. The first performance took place on 7 February 1792 at the Hofburgtheater in Vienna in the presence of Emperor Leopold II, who liked it so much that, after giving dinner to the whole company, he asked for a complete second performance. As with the best opera buffa of the 18th-century, it contains a plot full of impossible situations, elaborate disguises and, of course, a happy ending.
The staging by Teatro Regio set the story in 1950s Broadway. Here, Geronimo, a Neapolitan who emigrated to New York, is a man of standing with a business to run – a thriving cake boutique – and two daughters, Elisetta and Carolina, to marry off. He dreams of marriages to rich aristocrats, but he doesn’t know that Carolina loves the delivery boy and married him in secret.
As usual, OperaVision offers insights into the stories on stage and the people - on and off stage - who bring these shows to life: a video preview of the opera, the story of Il matrimonio segreto told by the cast, a ‘behind the scene’ and interviews with director Roberto Catalano and conductor Davide Levi.
Besides Il matrimonio segreto, another opera production from Emilia-Romagna is included in the titles programmed this month – a chance to discover a rarely-performed work: Catone in Utica by Antonio Vivaldi, streamed live on March 17, at 20h00 CET from Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, which is doing pioneering work to re-establish the reputation of Vivaldi as an opera composer.