The sixth title of Opera Carlo Felice Genoa’s 2022-2023 Opera Season will be I due Foscari, which will be staged with six performances scheduled between March 31st and April 8th, 2023. The opera tragedy composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, inspired by Lord Byron’s play of the same name in verse, will be conducted by Renato Palumbo, who will take the podium of the Orchestra and Chorus (Claudio Marino Moretti is the chorus master) of the Opera Carlo Felice Genova. The staging owned by the Fondazione Teatro Carlo Felice bears the signature of director Alvis Hermanis, who also oversaw the sets, while costumes are by Kristìne Jurjàn, choreography by Alla Sigalova (created by the ETS Foundation), lighting by Gleb Filshtinsky and video by Ineta Sipunova. The cast includes the presence of Francesco Vassallo/Leon Kim (Francesco Foscari), Fabio Sartori/Giuseppe Gipali (Jacopo Foscari), Angela Meade/Marigona Qerkezi (Lucrezia Contarini), Riccardo Fassi/Antonio Di Matteo (Jacopo Loredano), Saverio Fiore (Barbarigo), Marta Calcaterra (Pisana).
The sixth title in Verdi’s catalog, made during the so-called “galley years,” I due Foscari debuted at the Teatro Argentina in Rome on November 3rd, 1844. The premiere, as Verdi himself reported, turned out to be “a half-fiasco,” due partly to an unprepared vocal cast and partly to the limitations of the chosen subject. Yet at first Verdi had been enthusiastic about that “bel dramma, bellissimo, arcibellissimo”-that was how he described it to Piave. The drama is built entirely on the contrast between paternal and homeland love of Doge Francesco Foscari and the woes of his son Jacopo, unjustly accused of murder and plotting against the Republic of Venice. The opera is distinguished by some new and experimental compositional solutions. The orchestration, for example, becomes more subtle and accurate, with a prominent place reserved for the harp and the woodwinds that restore an elegiac and nocturnal instrumental tint perfectly in keeping with the image of Venice described by Byron; the act endings end without the traditional stretto; and reminiscence motifs appear systematically; in fact, each character is associated with a musical motif that reappears, like a calling card, each time the protagonists return to the scene.