Event Details
Wed, June 12, 2019
21:30 – 23:00
The Continuum Theater
VILLA LA PIETRA
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Florence, Italy
A two-act opera by Roberto Scarcella-Perino based on the chivalric epic Orlando Furioso, one of the best-known works in Italian literature written by Ludovico Ariosto. The libretto by Flora Gagliardi navigates the plot from the known world to the moon, telling Ariosto’s stories about Christians and Saracens, sorcery and seduction, secret weddings and concealed identity.
Conductor: Giuseppe Bruno
Cast:
Francesca Caligaris, Soprano (ANGELICA/FIORDILIGI)
Dielli Hoxha, Baritone (ORLANDO)
Anna Chiara Mugnai, Mezzo (MEDORO)
Artemy Nagy, Tenor (ASTOLFO)
Lorenzo Nincheri, Baritone (RUGGIERO/BRANDIMARTE)
Daniela Nuzzoli, Mezzo (BRADAMANTE)
Lorenzo Tosi, Bass (RODOMONTE)
Magdalena Urbanowicz -Mezzo (ALCINA)
With the participation of the Youth Choir Fiesole Music School contucted by Joan Yakkey, and the students from the Commedia dell’Arte NYU Tisch Program.
Trailer
(More on YouTube: Pazzia e Lamento di Orlando and Finale Act 1).
Featured Biographies
Roberto Scarcella Perino
Composer
Roberto Scarcella Perino’s music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by excellent ensembles and soloists throughout Europe and The United States, including the Orchestra Arturo Toscanini, the Orchestra Regionale Toscana, Giuseppe Bruno and the Exclusive Saxophone Quartet. His works include four operas, 2 piano concertos, movie scores, three ballets, chamber and choral music.
His first opera, A Caval Donato, commissioned and premiered by Teatro Verdi in Pisa in 1999, has been produced also at Teatro Vittorio Emanuele in Messina. Mr. Scarcella Perino was chosen to write the music for Verdi, Merli and Cucù, an opera commissioned and premiered by Teatro Verdi in Busseto, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of death of Giuseppe Verdi in 2001. Blackout had its world premiere in October 2003 at the Tarrytown Music Hall in New York, and had further productions at Teatro Piccolo Regio in Turin and at Teatro Savio in Messina.
His Azione in Musica for children’s chorus, Le Passioni dell’Anima, the sequel to his successful Le Passioni dell’Aria, was premiered in Italy in April 2017 and one month later in New York performed by the New York City Children’s Chorus.
August 2017 saw the world premiere of his new opera Furiosus commissioned by the International Opera Theater of Philadelphia in Città della Pieve (Umbria).
Mr. Scarcella Perino is a Senior Lecturer at the NYU Italian Department and a Scholar in Residence at the American Institute for Verdi Studies. He has been the recipient of numerous high honors and awards, including an International Competition for Children’s Opera and the Musical Analysis International Competition N. Slonimskij. He studied with the Slovenian pianist Sonja Pahor to whom he dedicated his first Piano Sonata. He holds degrees in Piano from the Conservatory “Corelli” in Messina and in Composition from the Conservatory Martini in Bologna. He studied composition at Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Azio Corghi, in Milan and in Parma at Accademia Petrassi, and also Conducting at the Juilliard School of Music.He graduated from the University of Bologna with a degree in Musicology and he taught Music Analysis at the Arturo Toscanini Foundation in Parma. Every summer, Roberto teaches a course on Italian Opera at NYU in Florence. www.scarcellaperino.com
Flora Gagliardi
WRITER AND STAGE DIRECTOR
Flora Gagliardi, born in Pisa where she lives, has worked and performed, nationally and internationally, after completing all the necessary qualifications, as pianist, teacher collaborator, director, music therapist, counselor, operator and theater educator, trainer in socio-educational field, writer and essayist. Her attention and her eclectic skills have always been at the service of the young generations, of the people in need, of the disabled, rounding her every action on the democracy of relationships and affections.
Professor of lettura della partitura (score-reading) at the Conservatories of Sassari, Bologna and lastly the “Cherubini” of Florence where she was Deputy Director and Director, currently, after completing the institutional service, she returned to take care of her traditional artistic interests: writing of booklets of works for the younger generations, texts for musical theater, the direction of contemporary opera; her last works are the opera Furiosus with the music of Roberto Scarcella Perino for the International Opera Theater of Philadelphia and “The images of Filostrato” for the Composition Department of the Conservatory “G.B.Martini” and the Teatro Comunale of Bologna.
She promotes with conviction, organizing concerts and presentations, new works by composers, writers and artists whose figures include the investigation into the transformative possibilities of languages.
She works as an artistic-musical consultant for the Alumni Association of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa.
She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the “Department for development, experimentation and research” of the School of Music of Fiesole.
She coordinates the section “Robotics and new technologies in the diagnostics, restoration and conservation of Cultural Heritage” within the annual editions of the International Festival of Robotics in Pisa.