"Fly, thought, on wings of gold, fly, rest on the slopes, on the hills, where the breezes of the sweet native land are soft and fragrant!"
Verdi's third opera Nabucco deals with a biblical theme from the Old Testament about the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (ca. 630-562 BC). Already its premiere in 1842 was a great success, the audience of the time perceived in it a secret expression of the struggle of the Italian nation for liberation from Habsburg slavery and for unification. This moment was underlined in a unique way by Verdi's music. The famous choral song, "Aria for Choir" Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate ( Fly, thought, on golden wings) was heard at street demonstrations all over Italy and is still the most popular musical number of the entire opera. Verdi wrote this opera based on the text of the librettist Temistocles Solera, who was inspired by historical realities and biblical books of the Old Testament about the conquest of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the subsequent fate of the Jews in Babylonian captivity. The poet Solera enriched the plot of the opera with other characters, Nabucco's two daughters, the Jewish warrior Ishmael, the prophet Zaccaria, i.e. Zacharias (the actual prophet Zacharias, however, lived in a different time). With all of them, we experience Verdi's evocative music, expressing all the dramatic situations and tense emotions of the characters, culminating in the depiction of Nabucco's madness.
At the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre, Nabucco has been presented in only three productions so far (1968, 1989, last in 1998; this production only had its finale in 2016).
With our new production, we return to the stage form of the first Ostrava performance of Nabucco from 1968, thereby paying tribute to the two creators, director Miloslav Nekvasil and scenographer Vladimír Šrámek, who, with their joint work in the years 1960–1990, left a significant mark in the history of the Ostrava Opera.
