MILAN — Riccardo Muti and Pl\u00e1cido Domingo will headline the 2021 Verona Arena Opera Festival, essentially last year’s season revived as a sign of \u201cgreat optimism and utmost seriousness,” the festival’s general director said Thursday.<\/p>\n
After an abbreviated 2020 season of concerts due to the pandemic, operas will be fully staged with a complete cast and chorus. But the Arena\u2019s elaborate sets, including a full pyramid for \u201cAida,\u201d will be substituted with technology, including projectors and holograms, to reduce the number of people backstage and maintain distancing requirements.<\/p>\n
Seating will be limited to 3,200 at the start of the season, but organizers said they hoped the vaccine campaign will advance in a way to allow more seating as the season progresses. In a normal year, a sold-out show seats 13,550.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have more experience, and we know better our enemy,” general director Cecilia Gasdia told a news conference. \u201cWe have strict protocols that can evolve. We have virus tests, and above all we have the vaccine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Muti will open the season on June 19 and 22, conducting a concert version of \u201cAida\u201d to mark the 150th anniversary of the Verdi title whose pageantry has made it a festival mainstay.<\/p>\n
The summer festival will then pick up with the 2020 calendar of operas that never were staged, starring the cast as announced last year: \u201cCavalleria rusticana\u201d by Pietro Mascagni together with \u201cPagliacci\u201d by Ruggero Leoncavallo, \u201cAida,\u201d \u201cNabucco\u201d and \u201cLa Traviata\u201d by Verdi and Puccini\u2019s \u201cTurandot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Domingo will headline one of five gala events, which include also Verdi\u2019s \u201cRequiem,\u201d Beethoven\u2019s Symphony No. 9, an opera gala featuring German tenor Jonas Kaufmann and a ballet gala starring Roberto Bolle.<\/p>\n
Theaters in Italy have been mostly closed since February 2020 because of the pandemic, and Gasdia expressed her solidarity \u201cwith all the artists who have been suffering particularly for a year.\u201d She said the classical music world was looking with \u201cgreat hope\u201d at the government\u2019s plans to reopen theaters on March 27.<\/p>\n