Revolutionary hand-to-hand combat with the bard

For the Festival Verdi 2025, a prestigious recognition such as the Medal of the President of the Republic does not simply represent an opportunity to celebrate, with the solemnity and visibility of the occasion, the 25th edition of the event, with the attached tenth anniversary of the collateral programme Verdi Off. Above all, it constitutes the endorsement of a role and function that the Festival has attributed to itself and has fulfilled with admirable determination in the first quarter of this millennium: to take charge of the international enhancement of Verdi's heritage and legacy. No small task: certainly, the celebrated composer is an evergreen (pardon the pun), but there is no shortage of competition from titled institutions in Italy and around the world.

The Festival's secret lies in having identified a key in proposing Verdi to enthusiasts, experts and new generations, and in remaining faithful to that interpretative cipher. A cipher that consists in the mission to restore the music of the Bussetano with rigorous philological and scientific accuracy, aiming to propose in its productions the greatest possible fidelity to the original dictate. A dress of authenticity to the letter of the scores that is intertwined with the challenge of re-proposing the Verdi spirit in updated and even provocative terms, in the lightness of innovative looks, through the Verdi Off initiatives. The united intent is the promotion of a deeper knowledge and thus a fuller appreciation of a formidable cultural heritage that is more vital than ever.

The tension necessary for such an ambitious project is made possible by the close collaboration established with another prestigious Parma institution, the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, the fruits of which will be particularly evident in the 25th edition. The operatic programme, centred on Verdi's three Shakespearian operas - Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff (a fourth, the longed-for Re Lear, remained in the pipeline) - in fact proposes for the first time the two titles of his full maturity according to the lesson of the new critical editions still in preparation for University of Chicago Press and Casa Ricordi: the inaugural Otello (conducted by Roberto Abbado, directed by Federico Tiezzi, for the first time at the Regio, sets by Margherita Palli) edited by Linda B. Fairtile of the University of Richmond, Virginia, an expert on Verdi and Puccini, and Falstaff (also at the Regio, with the revival of the direction by Jacopo Spirei and the direction of Michele Spotti), curated by Gabriele Dotto, scientific director of the Archivio Storico Ricordi.

The critical edition, in the words of Francesco Izzo, contact person for the Verdi Institute at the Festival, consists of a "cleaning operation", "which recovers or rectifies details of Verdi's notation that had been lost or corrupted in the traditional printed editions, and which allow performers to approach these masterpieces with renewed awareness and new expressive and interpretative opportunities". One thinks, for example, of those details of phrasing and expression that, in the orchestration, deviate from the dominant tradition. In short, the critical edition places in the hands of conductors, singers and orchestra a thoughtful and reliable guide that can guide them, beyond any dogma, in conscious choices. In other words, the best of research and critical thinking at the service of an engaging performance.

The interest of Verdi's third Shakespeare (again in a critical edition, by David Lawton) lies in the choice of the version of Macbeth: not the 'definitive' Parisian version, but the original, no less than revolutionary one, 'expressly written and personally directed' by Verdi, as the contemporary playbill states, for the Teatro della Pergola in Florence in 1847, that is, in the midst of the 'years of imprisonment': a first melee with the Bard that Verdi promptly identified as the opera worthy of being dedicated to his second father-in-law and benefactor Antonio Barezzi.