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Risurrezione is a work whose value is to be found more in the orchestra than in the vocal lines, a peculiar thing for an Italian opera belonging to an epoch that gloried in enticing melodies.

Muti unlocks the immense dramatic potential of Verdi's revolutionary score, providing a wealth of colour and detail capable of conjuring mysterious Shakespearean worlds with no need for staging.

Marco Tullio Giordana's new production at the Maggio Musicale may be static, but musically there's much to enjoy in this rare slice of middle-period Verdi.

The in-house orchestra played out of its skin under Fabio Luisi.

Commissioned as an operetta, La rondine became a true opera instead, and was presented in 1917 in Montecarlo at the high point of WW1.

Metastasio's Didone abbandonata has been set to music at least sixty times. Florence revives a version by Leonardo Vinci composed in 1726.

In a staging new to Florence, the action is often merely a set of friezes, singers immobilised on a pair of moving plinths. 

The two Danieles – Gatti and Abbado – triumphed in the final opera of the 78th Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, with a heavenly new production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.