Simon Boccanegra by Verdi, From (2020/2021), Directed by Andreas Homoki, Conductor Fabio Luisi, Opernhaus, Zurich, Switzerland

Simon Boccanegra Social outcast Simon Boccanegra has enjoyed great popularity since ridding Genoa of a pirate plague. Paolo Albiani, the leader of the Popular Party, wants to break the power of the nobility and selfishly urges Boccanegra to run for the office of Doge. Boccanegra reluctantly agrees. He hopes to win back his beloved Maria through his increased social status, who is being withheld from him by her father, the nobleman Fiesco. But while Boccanegra is being proclaimed Doge in the city, he discovers that his beloved has died in Fiesco's house. Even in this dramatic prologue, set in a gloomy night, it becomes clear that private and political destinies are tragically intertwined in this opera. In the main story, the Doge, who has been in office for 25 years, finds in Amelia his long-lost daughter, only to lose her immediately to her aristocratic lover Gabriele Adorno. The schemer Paolo, who has his eye on Amelia himself, is publicly pilloried, whereupon he takes revenge and poisons the Doge. The text by Antonio García Gutiérrez, which draws on medieval history, inspired Giuseppe Verdi to create a stirring drama against an eminently political background. The peace efforts of the Genoese Doge Boccanegra in the 14th century are related to the Italian attempts at unification in the 19th century. But above all, in this melodrama, composed for Venice in 1857 and fundamentally revised in 1881 in collaboration with Arrigo Boito, Verdi succeeds in musically penetrating the characters of powerful and power-crazed men. After Alban Berg's Wozzeck and Heinz Holliger's Lenau, the internationally acclaimed baritone Christian Gerhaher will make his role debut again as Simon Boccanegra in a production by Andreas Homoki. Fabio Luisi is working on a new Verdi production for the last time in his capacity as general music director.