The show includes a refined combination of some lessons by Francesco Giorgino on the theme of love and affection with an anthology of arias from «Tosca», «Bohème», «Madama Butterfly», «Manon Lescaut» and «Gianni Schicchi», among the most famous titles of the opera composer from Lucca, who died at almost sixty-six years of age on November 29th of a century ago, an anniversary that is remembered throughout the world and that the Teatro alla Scala in Milan is commemorating these days with a series of performances of «Turandot», the opera left unfinished by the composer and completed by Franco Alfano after Liu’s death.
Puccini’s operas continue to be performed on the most prestigious stages in the world today. And the hundredth anniversary of the composer’s death represents an opportunity to commemorate and retrace the life and career of one of the greatest Italian composers in history. A commitment that the Valente Foundation did not want to shirk with this concert in which some of Puccini’s most famous heroines are reviewed, characters halfway between naive creatures and victims of the violence of male will and tenacious women, supported by an extraordinary strength of spirit. Figures through which Puccini translated his feminine universe into music, representing the values and culture of his time, with a look at women that was at the same time compassionate and with great moments of sensuality and emotional intensity.
And it is precisely because of his wide-ranging gaze that Puccini has been defined, among the great opera composers, as the most delicate reader and interpreter of the female world but also as a sadist hidden in silk gloves, a reading in this juncture justified by the terrible end to which many of his protagonists are destined, dying of tuberculosis, consumption or suicide, in any case in a condition of unhappiness and desperation. Tragic sentimental dream figures, such as Cio-Cio San in «Madama Butterfly», or Tosca or Mimì in «Bohème», and many others, part of that large pantheon of delicate but determined women, victims of ethical and cultural contrasts, around which the program and the theme of the evening will revolve.
