The famous French writer Stendhal claimed “The Italian girl in Algiers” to be the highest achievement of the buffa genre. The opera was written by Rossini in 1813. The premiere at the Venetian ”San Benedetto” theatre took place on May 22, 1813. Having conquered European audience very quickly “The Italian girl” found its way to Russia in 1822 where the cast of Italian artists staged it in Moscow at the Znamenka Theatre. Then the stage history of this opera in Russia has been set on pause for almost two hundred years until Gioacchino Rossini’s score was mastered by the St. Petersburg theatre “Zazerkalye”. The performance of the part of Isabella by Zara Dolukhanova who performed it in the concert version of the opera in 1955 in the House of the Unions was a remarkable artistic event of its time. In 2010, “Italian girl in Algiers” was performed on the stage of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory conducted by the famous maestro Alberto Dzedda who is famous for his Rossini performances. Today, the stage version of Rossini’s opera appears at the Moscow State Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre.
3 hours 10 minutes with one intermission
May 28 2013
Italian
