Francesca da Rimini by Zandonai, De (2021/2021), Dirigido por Christof Loy, Director Carlo Rizzi, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlín, Alemania

In 2018, Christof Loy brought Erich Wolfgang Korngold's THE MIRACLE OF HELIANE to the stage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin together with Marc Albrecht on the podium and Sara Jakubiak in the title role - a production that received two awards: as "Rediscovery of the Year 2018" by the Magazine "Opernwelt" and the DVD recording of the label NAXOS with the OPUS KLASSIK as the best "opera recording 20./21. Century". Now follows another collaboration between Christof Loy and Sara Jakubiak for Riccardo Zandonai's FRANCESCA DA RIMINI. Here, too, the focus is on the psychogram of a self-confident, nonconformist woman who eludes all moral and social constraints. Riccardo Zandonai, born in 1883, was a student of Mascagni and around 1910 was considered the new star in the Italian opera sky. His publisher Tito Ricordi planned a similar success story with him as his father Giulio Ricordi had planned with the young Puccini a generation earlier. Ricordi spared no expense or effort and acquired the exorbitantly expensive rights to one of the scandalous pieces of the time for the new opera Zandonais: Gabriele D'Annunzio's five-act drama "Francesca da Rimini", premiered in Rome in 1901 with Eleonora Duse in the title role. With "Francesca da Rimini" Gabriele D'Annunzio had resorted to material from Dante's "Divine Comedy", which was one of the favorite subjects of Romanticism in the 19th century. Cruel passions, bloody scenes in times of civil war, one caught in flagranti, The 31-year-old Riccardo Zandonai now saw the drama as an opportunity for a large-scale opera, for bright changes of color and a musical language that amalgamated the most diverse styles and times: between reminiscences of the madrigals of the Renaissance, the hardness of verismo, Wagner's TRISTAN UND ISOLDE as a role model and the French impressionism of Debussy, Zandonai found his very own way of European music theatre.