– The outstanding conductor, a specialist in Italian repertoire, will then give a course in Lleida, and open the next season at the Opera National in Paris
June 2019
After conducting Anna Bolena in Rome, Falstaff in Dallas and Aida in Venice, the Italian conductor Riccardo Frizza returns to Spain to take the helm of a new production of La Traviata which will premiere in August at the Castell de Peralada Festival (Girona), the most important opera event in Spain. Frizza first conducted this Verdi opera in 2005, while already having a dozen of the legendary composer´s operas under his belt. “I had been asked to conduct it several times, but until I was sure that I would be doing it in the optimum conditions, I preferred to wait.” The perfect opportunity came up – an engagement to conduct La Traviata at La Fenice in Venice, where Verdi himself premiered the opera. “Along with Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, which I had already conducted, La Traviata is part of Verdi´s popular trilogy,” the conductor points out. “The melodies in this masterpiece are part of the soundtrack of the western world. Who has not heard, for example, its famous Brindisi? Verdi knew how to reach people´s hearts with his melodies, and we will be able to relive this occasion in Peralada.”
In Frizza´s opinion, the opera´s plot is very forward-thinking for its time, “with an extraordinarily modern leading lady. In this opera, Verdi dared to make the main character not a queen, but a prostitute. When the opera premiered in Italy and all over Europe, families were completely patriarchal, but Violetta rebels, fighting against the man who could have been her father-in-law, for her love .”
In Peralada Frizza will be conducting the Barcelona Orquestra Simfònica del Gran Teatre del Liceu and the soloists Ekaterina Bakanova, René Barbera and Quinn Kelsey, in a Paco Azorín production. The performances are programmed for the 5th and 7th August.
The following day Riccardo Frizza will travel to Solsona (Lleida) to participate in the Solsona International Music Academy (AIMS) between the 8th and 11th August. He will be rehearsing with the symphony orchestra made up of the musicians who are taking part in the Academy, and later will be conducting the selected musicians in Beethoven’s Second Symphony.
Later, in September, Riccardo Frizza will begin the 2019-20 season at the Opéra National in Paris by opening the season with Bellini´s I Puritani, before then going to Bilbao to open the ABAO Opera season there with Lucia di Lammermoor.