September 30, 2022

The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theatre: the 2022-2023 season

All the best operas and concerts to mark in your diary

10 operas
2 operas for children
25 symphonic concerts

The programme of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino presents a rich calendar of events until April 2023: 10 operas plus 2 operas dedicated to young people, families and schools and no less than 25 symphonic concerts in the Sala Grande and the Zubin Metha hall. The Maggio Autumn Festival dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi began on 29 September, while the Maggio Carnival Festival dedicated to the Myth of Faust and Goethe will be launched in January 2023. Conducting some of the concerts and operas on the programme are the two great Maggio Musicale conductors Zubin Metha and Daniele Gatti. At their side other very important names including Mozart interpreter Dame Jane Glover, who makes her debut with a symphonic concert in November. There are also many soloists, to name a few Luca Benucci, Marco Salvadori, Alejandra Rojas Garcia, professors and first parts of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

OPERA SEASON

After Gioacchino Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia, it is the turn of Verdi's Il trovatore staged in repeat performances on 2, 5, 7 October in Sala Mehta with the new staging.
Geog Frederich Händel's fairy-tale and melancholic opera Alcina will be staged on 18 October with replicas on 20, 22, 24, 26, in the Zubin Mehta Hall.
The second Verdi title of the Maggio Autumn Festival, and the fourth opera on the bill, is Ernani. It will be staged on 10 November with repeat performances on 13, 15, 18, 20 in the Sala Zubin Mehta. It will be conducted by James Conlon and directed by Leo Muscato.
From 27 December to 8 January, for five performances, Don Carlo in the Italian version in four acts reopens in the Sala Grande, conducted by Daniele Gatti.

Testifying to the "reawakening" of the small and delightful 19th-century Goldoni theatre, the Oltrarno stage of the Teatro del Maggio will host - after the staging of Faust (in collaboration with Venti Lucenti) at the end of November - the production La finta semplice included in the calendar of the second Maggio Festival, the Carnival one, on stage from 24 January 2023 with replicas on 26, 28 and 29 January.
Ferruccio Busoni's Doktor Faust on the calendar on 7 February with replicas on 11, 14, 19 and 21 February 2023.

On 12 February 2023, with replicas on 15, 17, and 22, again in the Carnival Festival - and in the Sala Grande - one of the world's most performed, celebrated and beloved titles La traviata, by Giuseppe Verdi, conducted by the director emeritus of the Maggio, Zubin Mehta, in the beautiful staging designed by Davide Livermore, will be back on the programme.
The Rake's Progress, an operatic fable in three acts by Igor Stravinsky, in the Sala Mehtail 12 March, with replicas on 14, 16, 19, and 26 March 2023 sees the operatic return to the podium for the Maggio's principal conductor Daniele Gatti.

The last and tenth title on the programme before the next Festival in its 85th edition is Carmen by George Bizet, conducted by conductor emeritus Zubin Mehta.

SYMPHONIC SEASON

The Maggio's concert programme is very full when it resumes in September and runs until 24 March 2023 with 25 symphonic and symphonic-choral appointments (including a concert by the Astrolabio ensemble music group) with Zubin Mehta and Daniele Gatti conducting a total of 13 concerts and on the podium for the other occasions.
On 6 October, when the Maggio Autumn Festival begins, Zubin Mehta returns to the podium of the Sala Grande for a concert in which he will perform the overture from La Griselda by Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi.
On 11 October, Maestro Mehta will perform Anton Bruckner's grand Symphony No. 8 in C minor, the Austrian musician's largest and most ambitious composition. The concert is held in the Great Hall. Also in the same hall, maestro Gatti in the concert on 16 October will accompany the late Wagner with the Prelude from Act I of Parsifal and Verwandlungsmusik and then from Act III of L'incantesimo del Venerdì Santo, and the late Verdi with the Quattro Pezzi Sacri.

On 21 October, Zubin Mehta will perform the colossal Symphony No. 3 in D minor in the Sala Grande. On 29 October, to make up for a concert that was scheduled for 19 January 2022, Zubin Mehta on the podium and Maurizio Pollini at the piano, on the stage of the Sala Grande, will perform together Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Last Piano Concerto in B flat major KV 595. Another revival of a concert that was planned for January 2022 is the 30 October tribute to Maurice Ravel with the eagerly awaited conductor Charles Dutoit conducting the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and with Martha Argerich at the piano.
On 12 November, while he will be conducting the opera Ernani, again in the Mehta Hall, Maestro James Conlon will conduct a symphonic concert with a programme featuring the Trittico Botticelliano.
19 November in the Sala Grande will mark the Maggio debut of the highly refined conductor Dame Jane Glover.
On 24 November, in the Sala Mehta,the Maggio's principal conductor Daniele Gatti returns to the podium for a concert dedicated to two exponents of early 20th century Italian music: Goffredo Petrassi, Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Alfredo Casella.

On 27 November in the Mehta Hall, Maestro Christoph Eschenbach will be tackling the most Wagnerian of Anton Bruckner's Symphonies: the Seventh in E major.
On 4 December in the Mehta Hall a Spanish-inspired concert under the baton of Daniele Gatti.
The last concert of the year on 31 December will be conducted by maestro Daniele Gatti; on the programme will be Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in D minor op. 125.
On 22 January in the Mehta Hall Ingo Metzmacher will conduct Busoni's Doktor Faust from 7 February.
On 18 February, Maestro Mehta, in the hall that bears his name, conducts Johannes Brahms' Overture Tragica in D minor Op. 8, Béla Bartòk's Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra SZ95, with Yefim Bronfman at the piano, and in closing, Brahms' Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98.
On 26 February, Daniele Gatti, in the Mehta Hall, is engaged with a symphonic programme that includes Richard Wagner's Faust Ouvertüre, Ludwig van Beethoven's Concerto in C minor op. 37; Modest P. Musorgsky's A Night on Bald Mountain and Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird-Suite (1919 version).

On 10 March, maestro Daniele Gatti (who in the meantime conducts the opera The Rake's Progress in the Sala Mehta) on the stage of the Sala Grande del Maggio, offers a symphonic concert featuring pages from Antonio Vivaldi's Concerto in D minor op.3 RV 565.
On 24 March, the symphonic season and Carnival Festival programme closes with Maestro Zubin Mehta conducting Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor 'Resurrection' in the Sala Mehta: a meditation on life, death and life after death.