Over the course of four shows at the Monaco opera house later this month, Pietro Mascagni’s greatest success, the dark and stormy Cavalleria Rusticana, and Giacomo Puccini’s Danté-inspired Gianni Schicchi will be retold in a new production by Grischa Asagaroff. Â
Beginning with a gala performance on Friday 23rd February, these two wildly different tales – one of seduction and murder, and the other of clever yet comedic deceit – will be brought together by the Opéra de Monte-Carlo and set to music from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and the ChÅ“ur de l’Opéra de Monte-Carlo, under the conductorship of Speranza Scappucci.Â
Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana from 1889 is based on a short story of the same name that was written by Giovanni Verga. Set in a small and conservative Sicilian village in the late 19th century, it is a tale of jealousy, betrayal and murder amidst an ongoing love story that ends in a duel to the death. Â
Gianni Schicchi, which is widely known as Giacomo Puccini’s only comedy, uses an incident from Dante’s Divine Comedy as its core and is as fresh today as it was a century ago when it first opened in New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1918. Â
See more: Puccini’s legacy to be honoured with gala evening at the Opéra de Nice
It is the story of a clever medieval peasant living in Florence who is called upon by the scheming, greedy relatives of a rich old man who want him to falsify the old man’s will for them. Â
In a sleight of hand, he rewrites the will and leaves the fortune to himself, which he will use to pay for his daughter’s extravagant upcoming wedding to delectable comic effect. Â
In addition to the gala show, there will be three more performances: Sunday 25th at 3pm, Tuesday 27th at 8pm and Thursday 29th February at 8pm. Â
For tickets and more information, click here.Â
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Photo credit: OMC / Marco Borrelli Â
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