Shows and great music
A selection of the best concerts and events from January to March in the main Florence theaters
Florence has rightly been adjudicated the most proactive city in terms of culture and shows. In fact, if you want, there’s a show every night. Here’s what’s on in the city’s main theaters, and not to be missed.
OPERA DI FIRENZE
The year begins with the love traps and street artists’ pranks in one of the most famous works by George Bizet, Carmen (January 7-18). Conducted by Ryan McAdams and directed by Leo Muscato, Carmen is Veronica Simeoni. La Favorite (February 22 - March 3) had a troubled history. Gaetano Donizetti had thought of the mistress of the viceroy of Naples, but problems of censorship had him go back a few centuries, transferring the story of the king’s favorite to Castile. Ariel Garcia Valdés directs, and Fabio Luisi conducts the first Florentine staging of the French version. Instead, Il Barbiere di Siviglia (March 20-29) by Gioacchino Rossini, revised by Damiano Michieletto, is given a modern, more carefree interpretation, with setting the opera and its eccentric characters in a modern train. And in the tricentennial of Christoph Gluck, we mustn’t miss Christoph Gluck’s Alceste (March 21-30), presented by Pier Luigi Pizzi in the original Italian version as it was staged in Vienna in 1767. There’s a wealth of symphonic music with Fabio Luisi and the concerts for Strauss (February 8-24); while Alexander Lonquich on March 24th tackles Mozart and Radu Lupu, one of the major interpreters of Schubert’s piano works, on March 27 presents Six Musical Moments of the Austrian master.
TEATRO DELLA PERGOLA
The year begins in an atomic bomb shelter for Glauco Mauri and Roberto Sturno who bring Samuel Beckett’s Endgame to life (January 8-14). From February 6 to 11, Alessandro Preziosi is Van Gogh by Stefano Massini. Stefano Accorsi tells us about everyday life with a series of fairy tales in the Favola del principe che non sapeva amare (February 20-25) adapted by Marco Baliani from ‘The Tale of Tales’ by Giambattista Basile.
March opens with a work that takes us back to the psychological consequences of the Holocaust with an intense Elena Sofia Ricci, who, with Gian Marco Tognazzi and Maurizio Donadoni, gives life to Broken Glass (March 6-11) by Arthur Miller, directed by Armando Pugliese.
TEATRO VERDI
The ocean crossing from the jungle to New York’s skyscrapers is a hymn to friendship in Madagascar, with the characters of the film in a musical version (January 6-7). Cinderella is back, the 14th, in the latest version by the Moscow Ballet. Lorella Cuccarini is the cruel protagonist of The Snow Queen (January 26-28). Maurizio Colombi is inspired by Turandot. Great Spanish dance show with Flamenco Live by the Ballet Flamenco Espanol, February 3. The capricious Gioseffa is an inconsolable widow, owner of the Al Cavallino bianco hotel (February 4) in one of the most exhilarating operettas of the Compagnia italiana di Operette, conducted by Maurizio Bogliolo. From 8 to 11 the musical returns with Dirty dancing. Director Federico Bellone and the choreographer Gillian Bruce faithfully reproduce the love story of the film that won the Oscar for The Time of My Life. Carnival Concert the 13th, with violinist Nemanja Radulovic, conducted by Elji Oue, presents music by Prokofiev, Dvorak and Mozart. Jersey Boys (February 16-18) has been proclaimed the most innovative musical of 2016 and particularly the version by Claudio Insegno, directed by Alex Mastromarino, with hits of a young Italo-American from the 1950s to the 1970s. The National Ballet of Sofia with Don Quixote (March 1) synthesizes Russian and German dance by offering a leaner version of the work inspired by Cervantes. Dance is onstage again on the 11th with Night Garden by the Evolution Dance Theater. Antony Heinl directs a show of dance and acrobatics, with music ranging from Massive Attack to Radiohead and Joni Mitchell. Giovanni Allevi, the 25th, brings his latest work Equilibrium Tour with music and the support of 13 Stringed Instruments from the Italian Symphony Orchestra.
TEATRO PUCCINI
Theater within theater with Familie Floz-Teatro Delusio (January 19-21) by Paco Gonzales, presenting various forms of spectacle and using masks in an original way. Caveman is back (January 27), the comic cabaret-musical by Maurizio Colombi directed by Teo Teocoli on the deeds and misdeeds of married life. Dance and acrobatic scenes are the stars in Sonic-Toren (March 23-24). The Sonics return to theaters with this new production presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, intended as a hymn to joy, color and happiness.
