Stellar cast for ‘Attila’ on stage from Friday: on the podium Oren, directed by Daniele Abbado. Tomorrow at 10.30 am the director and conductor meet the press. The opera from Friday 19 at the Teatro Massimo. Thursday the dress rehearsal in favour of Biagio Conte.
A new production of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Attila by Verdi, on stage from Friday 19 February, in co-production with the Teatro Comunale in Bologna and the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Director Daniele Abbado, on the podium the great Daniel Oren. Attila is the famous Uruguayan bass-baritone Erwin Schrott, one of the most famous opera singers in the world; Odabella is Svetla Vassileva; Foresto is Fabio Sartori; Ezio is Simone Piazzola. Sets and lights by Gianni Carluccio, costumes by Gianni Carluccio and Daniela Cernigliaro. A great cast for an opera that has been missing from Palermo since 1975 and was first performed in Venice on 17 March 1846. On Thursday 18 at 6.30 pm, the dress rehearsal in favour of the work of Biagio Conte, the lay missionary who works in Palermo to help the homeless, migrants and the poor.
Tomorrow, Wednesday 17 February at 10.30 am at the Teatro Massimo (Palco Reale) conductor Daniel Oren and director Daniele Abbado will meet the press.
‘A political opera,’ says Abbado, ‘in which we witness a total overturning of the usual categories. What should be the stranger, the enemy, the barbarian, is instead the man bearer of refined thought. He speaks of the people, of justice, of God, of the soul. Italians are the refugees who have lost everything, who escape and think about the foundation of a new civilisation. We are in the years when the Unification of Italy is still to be done. The year after the first performance, as many as fifteen theatres put it on stage, and the audience is inflamed with patriotic feelings’.
The Israeli conductor Daniel Oren began his career thanks to the great Leonard Bernstein, who in 1968 chose him, when he was just thirteen years old, as the lead vocalist in his Chichester’s Psalms on the occasion of the inauguration of Israel Television. But it was actually his mother who initiated young Daniel, still at an early age, into a comprehensive musical education by studying not only piano and cello, but also singing, harmony and counterpoint. He went on to further his studies in Europe, devoting himself almost exclusively to conducting.
In 1975, he won the prestigious ‘Herbert von Karajan’ competition reserved for young conductors and the starting point of his international career. His participation with Nabucco in the inaugural season of the New Israel Opera in December 1994 was a particularly significant moment: this musical event succeeded in bringing together his passion for the world of opera and his love for his homeland. Oren is artistic director of the Teatro Verdi in Salerno, where he conducts many titles during the opera season. He is also a regular guest in Paris, at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London as well as in Tel Aviv, Verona, Florence, Madrid, Cologne and Barcelona.
Palermo, 16 February 2016
Laura Anello, Head of Press Relations: 335.1008603