Carmen at the Arena

The 99th Arena di Verona Opera Festival 2022 kicks off on Friday 17th June with Georges Bizet’s “Carmen”, one of the most iconic titles in the Festival’s history. Together with  Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida“, “Nabucco” and “La Traviata” and Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot“, it constitutes one of the great operas scheduled for the 2022 Arena season.
With “Carmen” the Tuscan director Franco Zeffirelli made his debut at the Arena di Verona in 1995 and today the opera is presented to the public in an original and unique synthesis.
As is well known, Zeffirelli, on the occasion of the various re-mountings of his show, had made several substantial changes culminating in the new version in 2009. Today, thanks to the new stage-technical skills acquired and on the basis of observations gathered from Zeffirelli’s historical collaborators, it is possible to make a definitive synthesis of the Tuscan Maestro’s thoughts on his personal conception of “Carmen” in the Arena. Following the first sketches, integrated with the best innovations that Zeffirelli himself introduced in later editions, an unpublished version is born.
The musical direction of the opera is by Marco Armiliato and with an exceptional cast in which Clémentine Margaine, J’Nai Bridges, Elina Garanča and Yulia Matochkina make their debut as protagonists, flanked by the Don Josè of Brian Jagde, Roberto Alagna and Vittorio Grigolo.
Reruns of Bizet’s “Carmen” in the Arena are scheduled for 24 and 30 June, 14, 21 and 31 July and 11, 14 and 27 August.

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