BOV Opera Festival kicks off on March 15

The Manoel Theatre yesterday announced the fourth edition of the Bank of Valletta Opera Festival due to be held between March 15 and 23.

This year's edition will feature Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti, Mozart's Don Giovanni and an operatic concert featuring the soloists of the Mariinsky Theatre (Kirov).

BOV chairman Joseph Zahra yesterday presented the sponsorship cheque for the festival to Peter Fenech, acting chairman of the Manoel Theatre in the presence of artistic director Tony Cassar Darien.

Dr Fenech said the event had become a major event on the cultural calendar since the first edition four years ago.

"This success is underlined not only through the most positive local reviews it is achieving but is also being bolstered through numerous appraisals that the BOV Opera Festival is attaining on an international level in prestigious opera reviews and magazines around the world," he said.

The festival will kick off with Lucia de Lammermoor on March 15 and 17, an opera in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti with libretto in Italian by Salvatore Cammarano based on Sir Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor. This opera, which will be staged in Malta for the first time, was first performed in Naples in 1835.

The cast will be made up of Niko Issakov (Enrico), Mariana Panova (Lucia), Juan Gambina (Edgardo), Nikolai Pavlov (Arturo), Latchezar Lazarov (Raimondo), Andriana Nikolaeva Yordanova (Alisa) and Robert Schwarts (Normando).

The artistic direction will be in the hands of Plamen Kartaloff, also director general of Sofia National Opera in Bulgaria. He has staged many critically acclaimed productions in Europe and America. The opera will feature the National Orchestra under the musical direction of Michael Laus.

The operatic concert on March 19 will feature the soloists from the famous Marinsky Theatre, ex-Kirov of St Petersburg namely soprano Irina Dzioeva, baritone Vladimir Samsonov and pianist Mikhail Aptekman.

The programme will include various arias such as The Magic Flute (Mozart), Ballo in Maschera, Traviata, Trovatore and Lucia de Lammermoor (Verdi), La Favorita (Donizetti), Norma (Bellini), Barbiere di Seviglia (Rossini) and Adriana Lacouvrer (Chilea) among others.

Finally, Mozart's Don Giovanni will be staged on March 22 and 23 and will be co-produced with Palermo's Operalaboratorio following last year's collaboration which saw the co-production of Mozart's Cosi` Fan Tutte. It has a libretto by the Italian Lorenzo Da Fonte. It was first performed in 1787. Artistic direction will be under Mauro Avogadro while musical director Michael Laus will again conduct Malta's national orchestra.

This year's festival will also host two additional concerts, namely on Tuesday March 18 at 7.30 p.m. featuring popular operatic arias in concert, and a lunchtime concert on Thursday 20 at 12.30 p.m. comprising favourite Romanze de Salotto arias from the repertoire.

Both concerts will include the participation of the Don Giovanni cast from Operalaboratorio, Fondazione Teatro Massimo, coached by Elizabeth Smith with piano accompaniment by Mro Salvatore Scinaldi.