The symphonic season opens with the great Mariella Devia and costumes by Ungaro. Wednesday 3 February symphonies and scenes from Donizetti’s “Tudor Trilogy”. “Le Tre Regine”, portraits of sovereigns in the operas Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux.
The great soprano Mariella Devia and the great couturier Emanuel Ungaro for the appointment that opens the symphonic season at the Teatro Massimo next Wednesday, 3 February, at 8.30 pm. Symphonies and scenes from Gaetano Donizetti’s ‘Tudor Trilogy’: Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. Three operas based on three female characters at the Court of England, but in reality entirely centred on Elisabeth I: in Anna Bolena the story is told of Elisabeth’s parents, Anne Boleyn, condemned to the gallows for treason, and Henry VIII. This is followed by the opera in which the heated confrontation between Elisabeth and her rival, Mary Stuart, the cousin to whom she is opposed by everything: religion, rivalry for the English throne, and finally in the fiction of the opera also love for the same man. Finally, Roberto Devereux, where the protagonist is an aged Elisabeth but still capable of great passions and outbursts of anger, until the final renunciation of life and the throne.
Interpreting them will be Mariella Devia, interpreter of the greatest female characters in the history of opera for over forty years. Conductor, Francesco Lanzillotta; Chorus Master, Piero Monti. An extraordinary vocalist and exceptional interpretive strength, Devia made her debut in 1973 in Lucia di Lammermoor, marking a point of arrival that is difficult to surpass in the history of bel canto, as she has been unanimously recognised by audiences and critics in the world’s most important theatres.
Her vast, coherent and rigorous repertoire has won her critical acclaim and the favour of the public, which has given her an enthusiastic reception in theatres all over the world. The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Lyric Opera in Chicago, the Staatsoper in Munich, the Opéra National and the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and the Tokyo Opera House are just some of the stages on which she has appeared in leading roles. Throughout her intense and prestigious career, Mariella Devia has collaborated with some of the most authoritative conductors including Riccardo Chailly, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado, Richard Bonynge, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, James Levine and Georges Prêtre. In June 2014, her return to New York’s Carnegie Hall, where she played Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux, was a resounding international success.
Signing the stage clothes will be Emanuel Ungaro, the great couturier. Born into a modest family of Italian immigrants in Aix-en-Provence, Ungaro learnt the rudiments of the tailor’s trade with his father, and then set off in search of his own expressive freedom in Paris, where he succeeded in being admitted to Balenciaga’s workshops. In 1965, he created the brand under his own name and opened a haute-couture maison with the main shop on the avenue Montaigne. In 1996, he agreed to join the Italian Ferragamo group. But no longer owning his own maison, he retired from the Parisian fashion world in 2005. Today, he lectures and creates costumes for several opera houses: in 2011, he made the costumes for Semiramide directed by Luca Ronconi at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. In February 2015, Carmina Burana for the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome.