Massimo Bellini Theater of Catania: opening with “The Magic Flute”

From January 20 to 27th, Mozart’s extreme masterpiece returns to the lyric scenes of Catania.

Philosophical drama, initiation rite, folk tale. It is all this, but also much more, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), the latest title in the melodramatic catalog of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The heart of the musician would have ceased to beat just sixty-five days later, leaving his spiritual testament unfinished, the Requiem written on commission by a mysterious aristocrat. And it is at the last glimpse of the brilliant artistic parabola of the Salzburg composer that the Massimo Bellini Theater is dedicating a focus, for the inaugurations of the symphonic and lyrical posters, both entrusted to the baton of its principal guest conductor, Gianluigi Gelmetti.

So from 20 to 27 January returns to the lyric scenes of Catania the extreme Mozart lyric masterpiece, absent since 1999, when for the second and last time the legendary staging by Werner Herzog was presented to the public in 1991, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the composer. No less waiting, however, accompanies the debut of the new production, which in the name of Gelmetti associates that of a director of the caliber of Pierluigi Pizzi, dean of theatrical scenes, who signed his first Mozart installation, Don Giovanni, in 1952.

In a precious balance between young talents and established international celebrities, the cast deploys prominent elements, starting with the queen of the night by Christina Poulitsi, a stratospheric soprano coloratura, who has already played the role – one of the most fearful of the entire musical literature – in Paris and Tokyo, in London and New York, in Barcelona as in Dresden.

A magical alchemy for a flute that announces great interest.