Verdi: Alzira ****
Buxton Festival, 7th July 2018
It’s not just Paddington Bear and Juan Diego Flórez who hail from darkest Peru. Alzira, Verdi’s eighth opera, is set amongst Incas and Spanish invaders in a plot very loosely based on Voltaire’s Alzire, ou les Américains. Composed for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, it was Verdi’s first collaboration with renowned librettist Salvatore Cammarano. It flopped. Verdi himself described it as “Quella è proprio brutta” (This one is really ugly), while his friend Andrei Maffei wrote “No one likes the piece, and I too find it unworthy of such a capable composer”. The jury’s been out ever since.
Jung Soo Yun (Zamoro) and revolutionaries
© Richard Hubert Smith
Read the full review on Bachtrack.