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October 15, 2019An absolute level billboard in one of the most beautiful theaters in Europe. The 2020 season of Massimo opens on January 26 with a double return: Parsifal by Richard Wagner, the composer's last work completed in Palermo, absent from the theater since 1955. On the podium, the new musical director, the Israeli Omer Meir Wellber. The direction will be by Graham Vick, who returns after another Wagnerian project, the Tetralogy created exclusively for the Teatro Massimo between 2013 and 2016. The scenes are by Timothy O'Brien, the costumes by Mauro Tinti, lights by Giuseppe Di Iorio for a production made in co-production with the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. In the role of the protagonist there will be Daniel Kirch, German tenor among the most successful interpreters of the Wagnerian repertoire. Amfortas will be played by Russian bass Evgeny Nikitin. It will be the debut in Palermo and in the role of Gurnemanz for John Relyea, who made himself known to the Italian public with Billy Budd in Rome, while the bass Thomas Gazheli (Klingsor) returns to the Teatro Massimo after having been Wotan in Vick's Tetralogy . The female protagonist is the Dutch soprano Eva Maria Westbroek: among her commitments in the coming months also the part of Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre at the Amsterdam Opera and at the Opéra Bastille.On the thirteen total titles, seven include a new production: after the inauguration Parsifal, Nabucco , staged from 13 to 21 March with the direction of Andrea Cigni and the direction of Andrea Battistoni, is a show made in co-production with the Teatro Regio of Turin that will see the baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat and the soprano Saioa Hernandez as protagonists and that will then go on tour in Japan; Vincenzo Bellini's pirate , from 3 to 9 June, directed by Luigi Di Gangi and Ugo Giacomazzi - authors of the 2017 edition of Norma that will go to Japan with Nabucco - with a very high level international cast where the soprano Angela Meade and tenor Celso Albelo.
New staging and international co-production for the trilogy of works by Mozart and Da Ponte: Le nozze di Figaro , Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni will be presented alternating, from September 15th to 30th, in an innovative setting entrusted to Jean Philippe Clarac and Olivier Deloeuil ( Le Lab) which brings together the three shows, while leaving them independent, as three parts of a unique story, where a dense network of references is woven between the characters and the actions. The trilogy will be conducted by Omer Meir Wellber.
New installation realized in the laboratories of the Teatro Massimo also for Čajkovskij's Swan Lake , the classical ballet that will end the season (from 15 to 23 December), main interpreters Evgenia Obraztsova of Moscow's Bol'shoi and István Simon of the Opera Ballet of Dortmund.
In the opera season there will also be Falstaff directed by Daniel Oren directed by Jacopo Spirei, two Sicilian singers, the baritone Nicola Alaimo (Falstaff) and the soprano Roberta Mantegna (Alice Ford), on stage from 21 to 27 February. Donizetti's Roberto Devereux from April 29 to May 7 will see the awaited return of director Roberto Abbado and soprano Maria Agresta, who will make his debut as Elisabetta I in March at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris always with Abbado and for the first time in Italy precisely in Palermo. From 15 to 24 October, Jader Bignamini will direct Manon Lescaut with the Palermo debut of Yusif Eyvazov and Maria José Siri in the role of the protagonist, the installation will be that of the Teatro Massimo with scenes and costumes by Fiorenza Mariani, directed by Pier Francesco Maestrini that takes over the historical one of his father Carlo. The final title for the works and the beginning of a cycle dedicated to Richard Strauss will be Elektra , from November 24th to December 2nd in the production of the Mannheim Nationaltheater. To direct this intense title will be Gabriele Ferro, honorary director for life of the Teatro Massimo, with a prestigious cast that will see Irene Theorin as interpreter of Elektra and Violeta Urmana in that of Klytämnestra.
The other two ballet titles, which will always involve the Corps de Ballet of the Teatro Massimo, will be Coppelia in the choreography of Roland Petit, from 31 March to 5 April, and Les liaisons dangereuses from 18 to 24 June on choreography by Davide Bombana, show inspired by the epistolary novel of Choderlos de Laclos.
The 2020 concert season will host the Japanese violinist Midori as the artist in residence, who will star in two of the nine concerts dedicated to Ludwig van Beethoven in the 250th anniversary of his birth. During seven evenings of the season all the symphonies of the Bonn composer will be performed, directed by Omer Meir Wellber, Daniel Cohen, Gabriele Ferro, Daniele Gatti and Alpesh Chauhan. It starts on January 4th with the Ninth. On November 2nd and 4th the pianist Paul Lewis will face the five concerts for piano and orchestra. Also in the concert season on 11 April Rossini's Stabat Mater directed by Nicola Luisotti with Maria Agresta and René Barbera; two singing and piano concerts, on October 11th with the two tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Levy Sekgapane who will perform bel canto arias and duets accompanied by Giulio Zappa on the piano, while November 15th will be the date of the highly anticipated return of the mezzo-soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci to Teatro Massimo, for a program that will end with the song and piano version of La voix humaine by Poulenc, on the piano Donald Sulzen. On February 17, Rinaldo Alessandrini, one of the most successful interpreters of the Baroque repertoire, will be on the podium to direct the Conservatory's Baroque National Orchestra for a program in collaboration with the Conservatory of Palermo, while on April 20 the Sicily All Stars concert will be in collaboration with another important Palermo reality, the Brass Group with the Sicilian Jazz Orchestra.