By: Lia Contesso
Submitted: 2010-04-29 04:55:32 | Word Count: 531
Verona is known as the city of love, thanks to Romeo and Juliet, and of music, thanks to its lively amphitheatre, hosting concerts of various genres during the whole good season, and an opera festival that was inaugurated in 1913 with Aida.
The history of the unlucky Ethiopian princess Aida accompanies all the editions of the festival: at the Verona Arena Aida, the famous opera by Giuseppe Verdi, is the most traditional and spectacular, with tis majestic scenes that reproduce the Ancient Egypt. The opera, in fact, was commissioned in 1869 by Ismail Pasha, the sovereign of Egypt, to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal; the première at Cairo was on the Christmas Eve of 1871, delayed by the Franco-Prussian war, and it immediately became one of the most renowned operas, mostly after its first representation in Italy, about a month after the première in Egypt, on the 8th February 1872 at La Scala in Milan.
The large stage of the Arena immediately revealed itself perfect for the scenes used for Aida: horses, elephants, pyramids, armies...all the necessary, and more, to reproduce at the best the scenes of the Ancient Egypt on the stage, accompanied by the well renowned arias and music: Celeste Aida, the triumphal march...you don’t need to be an opera lover to recognize their tune, although maybe not knowing their origin.
The second opera for number of representations at the Arena is Carmen: its seasons are 22 (against the unbeatable 51 of Aida), followed by Nabucco (18) and Turandot (16); the stage of the Arena is perfect for Carmen as well: the director can comfortably represent Seville’s square, city in which the scene is played. The opera by Bizet boasts renowned arias, among which the beautiful habanera (“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”) that all the people find themselves to hum once the show is over; the première of Carmen dates back to the same period as Aida, though in a different area: it was in Paris, at the Opéra-Comique, on the 3rd March 1875. Diversely from Aida, though, it success did not come straightaway: Bizet, who died some months after the première, did not see its fortune.
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The Verona Arena offers all the services needed for its representations: pre-selling, online selling and selling on the place; but it’s better to buy the ticket in advance, to avoid remaining without anything. You can choose among the stalls and the stands, with numerated and non-numerated places; if you choose the non-numerated places in the stands you’d better have some cushions: the stone stands are not very comfortable, and opera last some hours...but the threesome “Verona arena opera” stays inextricable.
In fact you can say the in Verona opera and concerts have a fundamental role in the city: operas, ballets and concerts of various genres at the Arena set the appointments in the whole summertime for the city and surroundings inhabitants and of the tourists, giving music and show nights in a marvellous context, full of history and emotions.
