Five works for as many centuries, from 1600 to 1900. Entrusted to the artistic direction of Sebastian F. Schwarz, superintendent and artistic director of the Regio di Torino, and to the musical direction of Fabio Luisi, one of the most important Italian conductors, the 48th edition of the Festival della Valle d’Itria (from 19 July to 6 August in Martina Franca, in the province of Taranto), proposes a real journey into music, confirming its basic setting: to stage ancient, rare or brand new scores. For many years now, the Valle d’Itria Festival has been an international reference with an audience that comes from various countries, as well as one of the most prestigious events in Puglia in the summer. “The Valle d’Itria Festival this year is a historical journey that crosses all five centuries of opera. We have five representatives, one for each century ”explains Schwarz, who will remain in office for three years and has taken over the baton of the Festival from Alberto Triola who, after 12 years, left to concentrate on the role of superintendent of the Toscanini of Parma.
The rarity of the French edition
The inauguration on 19 July is entrusted to the new production of “Le joueur” (“The Player”) by Sergej Prokofiev (repeats on 24 and 30 July and 6 August) with the orchestra of the Petruzzelli Theater in Bari conducted by Jan Latham Koenig . For the first time at the Festival della Valle d’Itria an opera by a Russian composer is staged, whose 200th anniversary of his birth was celebrated in 2021. In Martina Franca the opera will be performed not in the “traditional” version of the libretto in Russian but in the rarer, in French, by Paul Spaak, which was the absolute debut of the title in 1929 at the Théâtre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels. By Prokofiev, who also edited the libretto based on the novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoevskij, this work is considered his first, important score for musical theater, the drafting of which began in 1915.
A work by Bellini for the 19th century
For the other centuries, the seventeenth-century opera is “Il Xerse” (1655), by Francesco Cavalli, which will be staged at the Verdi Theater in Martina Franca on 25, 29 and 31 July. The eighteenth-century title is “La scuola de ‘gelosi” (1778), by Antonio Salieri, which will be performed on July 27 at the Palazzo Ducale in the form of a concert. One of the rarest works from Vincenzo Bellini’s catalog, “Beatrice di Tenda”, was chosen for the nineteenth century. Michele Spotti will conduct the Petruzzelli orchestra. The closing of the Festival is entrusted to an absolute world premiere: “Italian Opera” by Nicola Campogrande, composed in 2010 from a libretto by Elio and Piero Bodrato, which will be staged for the first time at the Palazzo Ducale on 3 and 5 August. “The distinctive and identifying feature of the Valle d’Itria Festival remains that of representing unpublished works to discover beautiful music” says Franco Punzi, president of the Paolo Grassi Foundation in Martina Franca. The Festival, in fact, is also due to the initiative of the former superintendent of the Teatro alla Scala and former president of Rai, as well as founder with Giorgio Strehler of the Piccolo Teatro. Grassi, who passed away in 1981, was born in Milan to a family that came from Martina Franca.
“Italian opera”, the life of the country from the 1960s to today
For Schwarz, “Italian Opera”, commissioned in 2010 in Campogrande by the committee for the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, “tells the life of Italians from the 1960s to today. An important thing is to remind the public that opera tells life in all its facets, from historical aspects, historical characters and even invented or mythological characters, to the life of normal people today ”. The balance of the 2021 edition of the Festival is contained in 2,085 minutes of music offered in 20 consecutive evenings of which 11 are all sold out. The 48th edition will offer 5 opera titles, 3 films and 7 concerts for 20 days of entertainment.