Listen to Rossini's ARMIDA on WRTI, Saturday, November 29th at 1 pm. The Rossini Opera Festival is an international opera festival entirely devoted to Gioachino Rossini and takes place in his hometown of Pesaro, Italy along the Adriatic Sea. It was founded in 1980, using funds donated to Pesaro by Rossini himself when he died in the 1869. Its mission is to revive, to perform on stage and to study the musical heritage connected with the composer. The festival takes place each year in August and consists of several fully-staged productions featuring leading bel canto singers and rising stars as well as a wide variety of workshops, discussion and special concerts.
The Festival has become noted for its unique atmosphere, which, besides acting as an incentive to work on the stage and behind the scenes, ends up by involving the opera-goers themselves in the sense of solidarity binding together performing artists, musicologists, skilled workers, organizers and technicians, each of whom feels himself to be an important link in a rare and unique cultural adventure. This climate has favored the emergence of a method of work based on the parallel activities of musicians, musicologists and theatre technicians: problems of staging are dealt with together with problems arising from the score, whilst the musical experts deal with the solving of musicological problems whilst they take an active part in rehearsals.
The festival counts among its alumni such singers as Marilyn Horne, Montserrat Caballé, Ruggero Raimondi and Juan Diego Flórez. Its long-time artistic director is conductor and Rossini scholar Alberto Zedda. November 29th, 1 to 4:30 pm on WRTI.
Gioachini Rossini: ARMIDA
Carlo Rizzi, conductor
http://youtu.be/-4LOTYpiL9o
CAST:
Goffredo: Randall Bills
Ubaldo: Randall Bills
Rinaldo: Antonino Siragusa
Idraote: Carlo Lepore
Astarotte: Carlo Lepore
Armida: Carmen Romeu
Gernando: Dmitry Korchak
Carlo: Dmitry Korchak
Eustazio: Vassilis Kavayas