My new year with opera starts on 6th January at the Teatro Real in Madrid for one of The three Queens concerts, with a programme that combines the finales of the so-called Tudor trilogy. The performance is part of a world tour with Sondra Radvanovsky in the leading roles. It was for her regal voice that I created this project which we presented at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2019, the Liceu in Barcelona in 2021 and at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 2022. The three Queens is already available on a CD released in 2022 by Pentatone of the live recording of the first concert in Chicago, which was extremely well-received by opera lovers. As you can imagine, it is particularly exciting for me to be starting the new year with Donizetti. I am resuming an itinerary that is unfolding, thanks to Donizetti Opera of which I’m the proud music director, with the presentation of critical editions of famous operas, above all with original instruments, and of less well-known or almost forgotten operas like Il diluvio universale, with which we inaugurated the 2023 edition of the festival dedicated to Donizetti by his native city.

And (if Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux have a special place in the audience’s heart) our performance aims to offer not only a flourish of the most intense moments from the three masterpieces and a form of tribute to the most emblematic Belcanto, but also an aesthetic and theatrical reflection: because they are a concentration of the essence of incisive dramaturgy and fully accomplished Belcanto composition, surprisingly contemporary and able to inspire the most impassioned romantic cyclones.

It is a great pleasure to be back in Madrid conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Real for these regal leading ladies. Stage setting is by Rafael Villalobos.