Although I have already conducted Cavalleria rusticana, here at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino I’m engaging for the first time with Pagliacci, and consequently with the pairing that has combined these two operas ever since they were performed together at the Metropolitan Theater,

Italian Perspectives, out today on Pentatone, is the album I recorded with the Bamberger Symphoniker at the Joseph-Keilberth-Saal in Bamberg between June 2022 and May 2023. The programme includes Martucci’s Symphony No.

In between performances of Nabucco at the Teatro di San Carlo in January and rehearsals for Pagliacci and Cavalleria rusticana at the Teatro del Maggio at the beginning of February,

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,