REGGIO PARMA FESTIVAL 2023

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by OPERA Charm Team

April 27, 2023

A JOURNEY BETWEEN MUSIC AND THEATRE
From Peer Gynt to the Verdi Gala and 50 years of Musica Realtà

The 2023 edition of the Reggio Parma Festival is structured with a broad and heterogeneous playbill, capable of touching the emotional chords of the public through an artistic proposal that ranges from different performing disciplines: from dance to theatre to music. A journey in the world of art and culture between contemporaneity and tradition, new experimentation and modern reworking of timeless classical masterpieces. The project stems from the desire of the Reggio Parma Festival and all its members – the Municipality of Parma, the Reggio Emilia Municipality, Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, Fondazione Teatro Due and Fondazione Teatro Regio di Parma – to collaborate in the construction of a high-level cultural offer capable of promoting the production capacities of the Reggio Emilia and Parma territory in a national and international perspective.
If the project Maguy Marin – The Passion of the Possible, scheduled between May and December with performances, screenings, debates and workshops, is a hymn to the world of dance and a tribute to the French artist Maguy Marin, Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, equally stimulating are the appointments dedicated to music and theatre.

On June 20th and 21st, at 9 p.m. in the Shakespeare Arena of Fondazione Teatro Due in Parma, a unique space in Italy located among the city’s rooftops, Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt will make its national debut. A cornerstone of the European theatre canon, Peer Gynt combines the universality of the great picaresque stories with the most fairy-tale and mythological Nordic folklore. The life of the light-hearted dreamer Peer traverses the thousands of rivulets of an existence continually buffeted by Destiny, with a cast of fifteen actors directed by Daniele Abbado and original stage music composed by Edvard Grieg in 1875, including the famous Nell’antro del re della montagna and Il mattino. Performing them will be LaFil – Filarmonica di Milano, an orchestra in which different generations of artists come together, placing young talents alongside great musicians from famous international ensembles, conducted by Marco Seco. The performance, produced for this edition of the Reggio Parma Festival by the Fondazione Teatro Due, in collaboration with the LaFil – Filarmonica di Milano, is part of a line of research on musical theatre dear to the Foundation, aimed at investigating the relationship between words and music, between scenic action and musical texture and already successfully experimented with the staging of works such as, among others, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Much Ado About Nothing with stage music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

On Tuesday, October 10th, at 8 p.m. the Teatro Regio in Parma will be the stage for the Gala Verdiano, an unmissable event in the programme of the Reggio Parma Festival 2023. The Gala closes the celebrations of Giuseppe Verdi’s 200th birthday, with Omer Meir Wellber conducting on the podium of the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini and the Teatro Regio di Parma Chorus prepared by Martino Faggiani. On stage an exceptional cast, whose first announced protagonists are Eleonora Buratto, Clémentine Margaine, Gregory Kunde, and Michele Pertusi. The rich programme, entirely Verdian, alternates overtures, choral pieces, arias and scenes from I Vespri siciliani, Otello, Macbeth, Ernani, I Lombardi alla prima Crociata, Nabucco, Aida, Don Carlo. The Verdi Gala is part of the XXIII Festival Verdi that, from September 16th to October 16th, 2023, will celebrate the composer’s genius and works in a month of events that will take place in Parma, Busseto and Fidenza. The concert is part of the Viva Verdi project promoted by the Ministry of Culture for the acquisition and valorisation of the composer’s house-museum in Sant’Agata di Villanova sull’Arda. The celebrations will open as usual in the morning in Parma with the Ceremony in honour of Verdi in Piazza della Pace, at the Monument named after him, with the participation of the institutions and city associations, and with the Va’ pensiero sung by the Choir of the Teatro Regio in Parma and the Giuseppe Verdi Chorale.

The year 2024 will open with another eagerly awaited event at the Municipal Theatre Valli in Reggio Emilia: the anniversary of Musica Realtà, whose first cycle ended in 1973 with a memorable concert with the Budapest Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado, pianist Maurizio Pollini and soprano Slavka Taskova Paoletti. Fifty years on, the Reggio Parma Festival will present a musical event that, in addition to celebrating that project – important both for the city of Reggio Emilia and for the history of music in general – will also mark the 100th anniversary of Luigi Nono’s birth and the tenth anniversary of Claudio Abbado‘s death.

Tickets can be purchased directly from the theatre’s ticket office. A free shuttle service will also be organised between Parma and Reggio Emilia on the occasion of the performances of the Reggio Parma Festival 2023, to facilitate the movement of the public between the two cities.
All information will always be available and updated on the website.

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE A L'OPÉRA DE PARIS

October 2024

OPERA CHARM TEAM

PREMIERE OF ‘DON CARLO’ AT WIENER STAATSOPER

September 2024

Opera Charm Team

Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.

Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.

Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Oana Zamfir

Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.

She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.

Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.

Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.

Alexandru Suciu

Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.

His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.

During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.

He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.

Cristina Fieraru

Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.

She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.

She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.

Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.

BIANCA L. NICA

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