The enchanting scenery of Spessa Castle’s Theatre Garden will play host to one of Vincenzo Bellini’s most beautiful operatic works, La sonnambula. As 2023 marks one-hundred years since the birth of Maria Calla, the performance is a fitting homage to the soprano who was renowned for her incomparable interpretation of Bellini’s masterpiece.

The tenderness of feeling and the sincerity of love within the opera, alongside its bucolic setting and spontaneity are particularly in keeping with the message which the Little Opera Festival hopes to leave its audiences with this year. Now more than ever, the world is need of an awakening in the name of purity, a fresh love of simplicity and attention to small, quotidian gestures. What better way to communicate this message than through art, music, and theatre?

An impressive, international cast gives voice to the characters of La sonnambula, mixing well-established names with young but proven performers. Marko Hribernik, resident director at the SNG Opera and Ballet, Ljubljana, and assistant professor at the Ljubljana Music Academy, distinguishes the performance further with his direction. The cast of young soloists is made up of Nina Dominko as Amina, Juan Antonio Sanabria as Elvino, and Alessandro Abis as Conte Rodolfo.

The direction is entrusted to rising stars Vanessa Codutti who hails from Friuli (born 1992 and already active in Opera direction) and Marialuisa Badunno (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan and collaborator with the Teatro alla Scala). Both are versatile artists who specialise in site-specific performance and in the use of new technologies. Together they applied for the European Opera Prize with an original proposal for an opera of The Turn of the Screw, securing 4^th place in the final which was held at the Copenhagen Opera House.

In the orchestra pit, the GO! Borderless Orchestra which was born from a collaboration between the Lojze Bratuž Kulturni centre, the Emil Komel Slovene Centre for Musical Education, Glasbeno društvo NOVA, Glasbena šola Nova Gorica, and the Little Opera Festival. Accompanying them, the choir of the same name, trained for the occasion by Elia Macrì.

Directors: Marialuisa Bafunno e Vanessa Codutti
Costumes and Staging: Marina Conti
Light designer: Jean Paul Carradori
Soloists:Nina Dominko (Amina), Juan Antonio Sanabria (Elvino), Alessandro Abis (Il Conte Rodolfo), Kamilla Karginova (Lisa), Elif Canbazoglu (Teresa), Manuel Sedmak (Alessio), Daniel Spangher (Un notaro)
Go! Borderless Orchestra* & Choir
Choir master: Elia Macrì
Music Director: Marko Hribernik

*****

Tuesday 4^th July and Thursday 6^th July, 8.30pm
Spessa Castle – Teatro di Verzura
Capriva del Friuli (GO)

In case of bad weather: Nuovo Teatro Comunale di Gradisca

Tickets: € 45/30