The Performing Arts Center presents Opera Verdi Europa in Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot March 31 at 8 p.m. in Hodgson Concert Hall. The company will perform a concert version of Puccini’s final opera with live orchestra and English supertitles.
Tickets, $33 (rear balcony) and $38 (orchestra/front balcony, are half-price for UGA students with a valid ID. Discount tickets also are available for groups.
Turandot is widely regarded as Puccini’s most ambitious opera, with an exotic blending of orchestral, choral and solo vocal lines. Puccini finished the opera up to the last two scenes of the third act, which were completed by Franco Alfano from Puccini’s sketches. The opera received its world premiere in 1926 at La Scala in Milan under the direction of famed conductor Arturo Toscanini.
Turandot is set in Peking during legendary times. Suitors from many kingdoms have come to seek the hand of the beautiful Princess Turandot, but she has sworn to only marry the man who can solve three special riddles. Those who fail to answer correctly are executed. Turandot at last finds love with Prince Calàf, the son of the deposed King of Tartary.
Opera Verdi Europa was founded in 1996 by Ivan Kyurkchiev to present unique productions combining the best of the opera worlds of Bulgaria and all of Europe. Opera Verdi collaborates not only with Bulgarian opera companies and symphony orchestras, but also with opera houses from Bucharest, Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Chisinau, Moldovia; Kiev, Ukraine; Theatre Nemirovich-Danchenko, Russia; and many others. The company has performed throughout Europe and since 2003 has toured to great acclaim in the U.S. Last season, Opera Verdi Europa performed Madame Butterfly to a sold-out house in the UGA Performing Arts Center’s Hodgson Hall.
A pre-concert lecture, which is open to the public, will be given at 7:15 p.m. by Carrie Allen, a graduate student in musicology at UGA.
