Arena Di Verona Opera
A mellow place to purchase Arena Di Verona Opera Tickets is this site.In Verona, on the night of the feast of Saint Lawrence (the night of the shooting stars), thousands of people gathered together to take part in an unprecedented event. This night, however, the show wasn't in the sky... During his visits to Verona, Giuseppe Verdi would never have imagined that the ancient Arena, which was so widely admired by archaeology and history lovers, could have been transformed into a lyrical temple. Even more unpredictable was the fact that the event took place in his honour, with the staging of one of his masterpieces, Aida.
Everything began long ago in the year 1913, to celebrate the centenary of the birth of the great Italian composer. To commemorate him in a dignified way, the Veronese tenor Giovanni Zenatello and his wife Maria Gay proposed the idea of putting on the most spectacular of Verdi's operas in the Arena to the impresario Ottone Rovato, to the chorus director Ferruccio Cusinati and to their conductor friend Tullio Serafin. At first the project was greeted with suspicion because the roman amphitheatre had never experienced an event of the kind since the era of its construction, in the 1st century a.d. In the roman times battles took place inside the Arena but in medieval times the amphitheatre's appearance deteriorated due to lack of care. It was re-evaluated however and made adaptable to suit prose performances in the last three centuries, overall for occasions directly associated with political life in the city. As soon as it was discovered that the acoustics were perfect in the Arena, it was decided that an experiment, never before experienced in the world, could be tried out; the staging of a lyrical opera in the open air, respecting, however, the theatrical rules for staging a performance.
So, on August 10th, 1913 Aida, Radamès and the Egyptian population sang before the thousands of spectators gathered from all over the world to take part in one of the biggest events at the beginning of 1900. Among them certain important musical and cultural figures of that era stood out, for example Arrigo Boito, Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni, Luigi Illica, Massimo Gorkj and Franz Kafka. The orchestra was conducted by Tullio Serafin, and the choir was directed by the choir master Ferruccio Cusinati. Among the soloists that evening, there were the tenor Giovanni Zenatello (Radamès), the soprano Ester Mazzoleni (Aida) and the mezzo-soprano Maria Gay Zenatello (Amneris).
The young Veronese Architect Ettore Fagiuoli was in charge of the scenography of a stage whose dimensions were unknown to any other theatre; an exceptional range allowed for an impressive and fascinating performance. The stage was overlooked from the sides by two tall Egyptian obelisks; two majestic sphinx stood out in the background, while, in the centre, an ingenious mobile colonnade was used to define the borders of the King's rooms or to frame the great idol Fthà. Finally, to complement the opera and to make the scene on the river Nile look more real to life, palm trees were imported from Nice and placed on stage. The costumes respected the original regulations of Auguste Mariette, the French Egyptologist who provided Verdi with the subject from which the opera was eventually born.
The event was a tremendous success and was destined to make Verona famous all over the world, right up to the present day. The 200,000 spectators who attended the 8 recitals in 1913 have increased to 600,000. They are attracted by the magic of the Arena where more than 40 evenings of performances are offered, all of which are dedicated to lyrical music.
Since 1913, Aida has been the symbol of the opera for the roman amphitheatre (so much so that for a great number of foreigners, the name of Aida has substituted that of the Arena), and continues to fascinate those who stop off in the city of the Scaligeri just out of curiosity for the performances in the Arena. During the last eighty-one seasons, horses, elephants and dromedaries, accompanying the Egyptian procession, have been used on the stage for the performances of Aida to the astonishment of the spectators. Apart from that, in the most recent productions of the opera, an image of the Nile was illustrated by a veritable pool of water, placed on the stage in a particular setting prevailed by colours of blue and silver. This idea was used for the first time by the director Pabst in 1953.
The fascination of the Arena of Verona lies in the majestic scenography, in the experimentation of colours and in the thousands of lit candles positioned on the steps all around the amphitheatre but overall its charm lies in the unique emotions felt by everyone present at a lyrical opera performed under a starlit sky. This magic is repeated every summer and, once again this year, the Arena awaits tourists and opera lovers to amaze them with its splendour and charm.