Arianna Vendittelli

Catone in Utica is the story of the power struggle between two giants of the Roman world, the dictator Julius Caesar (Cesare) and Cato the Younger (Catone), the upholder of traditional republican ideals. This battle of political wills forms the backdrop to the military action in which Cesare and Catone are engaged in 49-48 BC and to an involved secondary love plot. Catone in Utica was staged for the first time in 1737 in Verona and is one of the last operas by Antonio Vivaldi. Although only Acts II and III survive, this work is considered to be one of the greatest operatic compositions of the Venetian composer. After the successful staging of Vivaldi’s Farnace in December 2021, Teatro Comunale di Ferrara ‘Claudio Abbado’ offers a a chance to discover live a rarely-performed production by the 'red priest', as Vivaldi was known.

To save his protegé from a fatal destiny, a magician has imprisoned knights and ladies in an enchanted labyrinthine palace and mystifies them to the point of delirium. Luigi Rossi's first opera - boasting sixteen soloists, double and triple choirs for 6 and 12 voices, numerous ballets - marked the last surge of Roman opera before the Eternal City forsook it for a long time. For the Argentine conductor Leonardo García Alarcón, who rediscovered the opera in the Vatican Library neglected for 380 years, Il palazzo incantato is ‘the missing link in the history of opera and the metaphor of our lives'. ‘Leonardo Garcia Alarcon was known as a magician, now he has become a conjurer.’ (Le Monde)