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Programme presenting rare and fascinating operatic performances

Programme presenting rare and fascinating performances and vividly communicating the immediacy of the live experience

Opera on 3: Rossini's Il Turco in Italia

Rossini's Il Turco in Italia

15/05/2010

BBC Radio 3 - Opera on 3, Rossini's Il Turco in Italia

Maurizio Benini conducts Rossini's perceptive comedy of Neapolitan life and love.

In a performance given at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Maurizio Benini conducts Rossini's perceptive comedy of Neapolitan life and love, in a production set in the 1960s.

Ivan Hewett presents Il Turco in Italia - Rossini's perceptive comedy of Neapolitan life and love, recorded at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in April. A Turkish Prince, Selim, arrives in Naples by boat, looking for an amorous adventure. At the same time, the respectable Don Geronio is struggling to keep his younger wife, Fiorilla, happy. She is more interested in flirting with the young men around her, and she is immediately drawn to the exotic young Turk. Meanwhile, the poet Prosdocimo is trying to find a subject for a new play, and he decides to stir things up in the name of theatre, especially when he discovers Zaida, a young gypsy girl who was jilted by a prince in Turkey, and Don Narciso, the previous lover of Fiorilla, now usurped by Selim.

Rossini's lively vocal ensembles sparkle with desire, frustration, jealousy, and love. In this production, updated to the 1960s, this is all played out at the beach in Naples complete with pasta, wine, Italian cars, a Vespa, and a masked ball.

With additional insights during the interval from writer and broadcaster Daniel Snowman, and members of the cast, the conductor Maurizio Benini, and the directors, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier.

Fiorilla ..... Aleksandra Kurzak (soprano)
Don Narciso ..... Colin Lee (tenor)
Don Geronio ..... Alessandro Corbelli (baritone)
Selim ..... Ildebrando d'Arcangelo (bass)
Prosdocimo ..... Thomas Allen (baritone)
Zaida ..... Leah-Marian Jones (mezzo-soprano)
Albazar ..... Steven Ebel (tenor)
Maurizio Benini ..... Conductor 
Royal Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

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