Nabucco, with its genesis romanticised by Verdi himself, its success on stage ever since its very first performance and its becoming, following the Unity of Italy, opera of the Risorgimento, has been fortunate for several often contradictory reasons. Pure Verdi from the outset, it also carries historical veracity, with its historiographic reconstructions that have fired the minds of the finest academics. I conducted it for the first time at the Opera Carlo Felice in Genoa, far back in 2004, and returned to it in 2015 for the inauguration of the Arena Opera Festival. Now I’m preparing to conduct this work again at the Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, trusting – as decade follows decade, in a process of natural maturation and of familiarity with Verdi born of love – that I will offer it to the audience it as I see it: one of the last and most shining examples of Belcanto style.

on stage: 18, 22, 25, 28 and 31 January 2026