Arturo Chacón-Cruz

While best known today for having composed the ending to Puccini's unfinished Turandot, Franco Alfano wrote some dozen operas, including Cyrano de Bergerac (1936) with a libretto by Henri Cain based on Edmond Rostand's drama of the same name. It is a moving tale of romantic misunderstanding, swashbuckling bravado and heartbreaking loyalty, in which the eloquent Cyrano feels unable to express his love for Roxane because of his famously protuberant nose except on behalf of his handsome but inarticulate friend, Christian.

In celebration of Verdi's 200th birthday in 2013, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence produced the composer's colorful masterpiece Rigoletto for the first time in its history. Verdi expert Gianandrea Noseda conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a production that marked the return of the Canadian stage director Robert Carsen to the festival following a 17 year hiatus. Carsen sets his interpretation of this classic opera in the cutthroat world of the circus. Based on Victor Hugo's play Le roi s’amuse, Verdi's opera in three acts Rigoletto premiered in 1851. Similar to the play that inspired it, the opera faced censorship because of its controversial subject of libertinism at court. The opera’s tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunchbacked court jester Rigoletto, and the jester’s beautiful daughter, Gilda.

Woody Allen's production of the Puccini comic opera at LA Opera in 2015