Daniele Caluri

Out of Giuseppe Verdi’s adoration for William Shakespeare three masterpieces were born : Macbeth, Otello and, as a musical testament, his only comedy Falstaff. But in accordance with its librettist Arrigo Boito’s wish to remove the original bourgeois farce The Merry Wives of Windsor out of the English mists and to warm it up to the clear Tuscan sun, Falstaff transforms Shakespeare’s morality play into an ode to life, to pleasure and to reconciliation that forgives human vices, rewards intelligence and virtue, and praises that spark of madnessthat gives life its flavour. Shakespeare’s most famous and subversive comic character has indeed proved to be a fertile ground for Verdi who, then eighty-years old, signed with Falstaff his most modern, most ambitious, but also wisest and ambiguous opera.

"Tango Macondo" has born from a theatrical performance that merges words and sounds,
tangos and popular music, archaic rites and dreamlike contemporaneity. A journey "on the borders between delirium and geography" that from Sardinia, thanks to the surreal writing of Salvatore Niffoi, comes to cross Macondo, the imaginary country born from the oneiric and mythical universe of Gabriel García Márquez with its wealth of visions and wonders.

Aigul Akhmetshina is the fiery young mezzo taking the opera world by storm. Her story is one of determination and perseverance against the odds, starting in a rural village in the mountains of Bashkortostan. She left home aged 14 to pursue her singing career. Despite facing rejection from a conservatory in Moscow, where she was told she lacked the right voice and appearance, at the age of 27 Aigul has already etched her name in history. She has become the youngest artist ever to take on the title role of Bizet’s Carmen at both the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, both of whom have created new productions around her. Performing the role all over the world, Aigul feels an affinity with the character. "I cannot be put in a cage. Like the character of Carmen, I always fight for my freedom."

A unique combination on record of chamber music by the Swiss composer, surveying the development of his voice and career through the medium of the flute.