ROVIGO – Preparations are underway for the next edition of the First Opera Festival, which reaches its twentieth edition and this year celebrates thirty years since its foundation. Born in 1994, precisely thirty years ago, Opera Prima has welcomed various generations of the theater over time, presenting the novelties of the proposals and styles, demonstrating the changes, the tiredness together with the sudden disturbances and jolts, which from time to time have crossed the theater scene not only nationally.
The festival will take place from 26 to 30 June and intends to give voice to this double anniversary starting from this year’s unpublished image. “Three female figures who bear witness to the passage of time and generations of theatre”, states Marina Carluccio, president of the association. Festival Opera Prima and author of the photo, “Starting from the black figure, which refers to the poster of the first edition of 1994; passing through the white figure, an image which, in its evolution, has marked the revival of the festival in recent years; until we reach the red figure of a young woman, who looks to the future, embracing past and present.”
Starting from the image, this year’s programming also aims to offer spectators a journey through the history of the festival.
As he states Massimo Munaro, artistic coordinator of Opera prima, “This year’s edition wants to take the opportunity of this anniversary to invite spectators, some artists as well as some scholars who have even irregularly crossed these years of the Festival, to reflect on the memory. Which traces of yesterday’s theater remain visible in today’s theatre? What has changed in the practice and thought that has gone through theater in recent years, and in particular in that which has tried to innovate the language, which is the theater that our Festival has tried to present? What has changed in the artists’ personal journey and more generally what role did and continues to occupy within the society that hosts and produces it?”
In addition to being open to some interesting and unpublished works by young artists, this year the Festival will present some historical shows by some Italian companies, offering spectators the extraordinary and perhaps unique opportunity to revisit some important works, which perhaps had only heard about it without having had the opportunity to see them. Among these, Iago di Roberto Latini, now an award-winning actor and director who first came to critical attention at Opera Prima in 1998 with this show; Theater to eat? undoubtedly the progenitor of the way of understanding and practicing the Teatro delle Ariette, which was presented for the first time at Opera Prima in 2001. Even more historic, the Quijote! of the Teatro Nucleo, a 1990 show, revived by the company this year for the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation. And then the Lemming Theater which reinterprets the creation, Cinque Sassi, which it presented in 1994 at the first edition of the Festival with L’urlo e altri falistre. The Lemming, who was the creator of Opera Prima, will also present his new production, Attorno a Troia_Troiane, at this year’s Festival. Among the historical groups, Masque Teatro and Anagoor will also be present; while among the guests of the latest editions of the Festival, Giselda Ranieri, Sara Vilardo, the Italian-Danish Fabio Liberti, the American Joshua Monten, Collettivo Rosario, Psycodrummers and the Rovigo group Momec will return to celebrate the XX edition of Opera Prima.
Like every year, the Festival will close with a concert: this year the Syrian-Palestinian pianist Aeham Ahmad, also known for his public performances in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, will return to enchant us.
The Opera Prima XX Festival is organized by the Ass. Festival Opera Prima, in collaboration with the Teatro del Lemming and the Rovigo Cultura Foundation and with the support of the MiC-Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Rovigo, the Cariparo Foundation and ASM Set.
