-After conducting Donizetti’s Requiem in Bergamo, the Italian conductor will return to the podium at the Arena di Verona summer festival on July 25 for an opera gala.

July 2020
The Italian conductor Riccardo Frizza will be participating in the Arena Opera Festival in July once again, this time to conduct Il Cuore italiano della musica, an opera gala in which some of the best international opera singers linked to the popular Verona summer festival will perform. As the concert will be given in memory of the victims of the pandemic and in homage to Italian health professionals, the singers will include many of their compatriots, such as Francesco Meli, Fabio Sartori, Roberto Aronica, Fabio Armiliato, Annalisa Stroppa, Barbara Frittoli, Eleonora Buratto, Luca Salsi, Leo Nucci, Daniela Barcellona and Ferruccio Furlanetto. They will be joined by María José Siri and Saimir Pirgu. Frizza will share his conducting duties with Marco Armiliato, Andrea Battistoni and Francesco Ivan Ciampa.
This is the second homage to the victims of Covid-19 in which Riccardo Frizza has participated. On Sunday 28th June he conducted Donizetti’s Messa da Requiem in an initiative by the Bergamo Donizetti Opera festival, of which he is musical director. The event took place at the gates of the Lombard city’s Monumental Cemetery and was broadcast by RAI. The concert was attended by the most senior Italian officials, led by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella.
Although Frizza was going to be opening the Parisian Opéra National season in September with L’elisir d’amore, this engagement has been cancelled due to the health crisis. Upcoming engagements include Belisario and Marino Faliero in Bergamo, a Donizetti concert and Verdi’s Otello in Barcelona, a bel-canto gala in Montecarlo and La Sonnambula in Paris, among others.

-The Italian city was one of the places in the world most harshly punished by Covid-19. The famous Italian maestro will conduct Donizetti’s funeral mass in an event that will be broadcast by RAI1 which will be attended by the President of the Republic of Italy, Sergio Mattarella.

June 2020
Riccardo Frizza, musical director of the Festival Donizetti Opera in Bergamo (Italy), will conduct Gaetano Donizetti’s Messa da Requiem on the 28th June at the gates of the city’s Monumental Cemetery, in memory of and in homage to the victims of Covid-19. The pandemic hit the city and the whole of the north Italian region very hard. The event will be attended by the highest authorities in the country, headed by the president of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. The participating singers, the soprano Eleonora Buratto, the mezzo-soprano Annalisa Stroppa, the tenor Piero Pretti and the bass Alex Esposito, are all very attached to the region, alongside the Donizetti Opera Choir and Orchestra.
Riccardo Frizza confirmed that “the evocative power of music will help to celebrate this community ceremony” which will mean the re-start of the city’s cultural activity. “Before organising any artistic initiative, something that is deeply rooted in our culture, we consider it necessary to give homage to the victims and to the communal suffering that we have all felt, having lost so many loved ones. For an event of these characteristics, Donizetti’s Requiem is the most fitting choice. It will be performed by musicians related to the Donizetti Festival with the blessing of the cities of Bergamo and Brescia, who we would like to thank by accepting a token fee”, the Italian conductor explains.
The Messa da Requiem was composed by Donizetti in 1835 after the death of Vincenzo Bellini, for whom the composer professed to have a deep admiration, and it was performed for the first time at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome on the 28th April 1870, twenty-two years after the death of Donizetti himself.
In July, Riccardo Frizza will be conducting in the super-concert Il cuore italiano della Musica alongside three other conductors and 25 singers. The event is being organised by the Verona Arena.