Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.There are few more spectacular settings for opera than the Verona Arena. For more than a hundred years, the vast Roman amphitheatre from the first century AD has provided a unique venue for larger-than-life stagings during the summer months. Today, audiences have an additional reason to attend performances: some of the world’s finest singers now routinely grace the arena’s stage.Cecilia Gasdia, the locally born former star soprano who has been the Arena Opera Festival’s superintendent since 2018, has taken casting up a level during her time in charge, helping to ensure strong ticket sales and stabilise the festival’s precarious financial situation. The results have helped it weather a string of recent controversies, including uproar over the use of blackface in Aida (involving tonight’s Tosca, Anna Netrebko), an orchestral revolt over sub-par conducting by Plácido Domingo and an investigation over alleged mafia involvement in the construction of some stagings (Gasdia is not involved).Netrebko was essentially dropped by some of the world’s leading opera houses — including the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Royal Opera House in London — after failing to denounce Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, no doubt making space in her diary for other venues such as Verona that might have otherwise struggled to book her.The merits of Gasdia’s approach were evident in the opening night of this year’s production of Tosca starring the Russian-Austrian soprano. Hugo de Ana’s prosaic 2006 staging follows the libretto by setting the action against the backdrop of Napoleonic revolutionary fervour in Rome, with soldiers and altar boys parading in period costume, clusters of military equipment placed on one side of the stage and an enormous sword-wielding statue of Michael the Archangel providing an ugly backdrop. De Ana offers few surprises, the exception being when cannon placed on the arena’s seating tiers explode without warning, making audience members jump out of their skin.But when Netrebko strode onstage, winning a hail of applause before she had sung a single note, it was clear those who had bought tickets to hear her were determined to enjoy themselves. They were not disappointed. It is hard to imagine a more vivid account of Tosca today, the plum-voiced Netrebko drawing in listeners with a meld of dizzying infatuation, burning jealousy and coy supplication in the opening act. The soprano’s transformation into a woman capable of murdering her tormentor in act two was chillingly stark, each syllable of her clearer-than-usual Italian bubbling with rage.Netrebko and Yusiv Eyvazov, the real-life husband and wife who announced their separation in June, appeared to have lost little of their onstage chemistry in charged love duets. I yearned for more Mediterranean warmth than Eyvazov’s narrow, sometimes bleating tenor was able to muster as Cavaradossi, but his virile magnetism and cries of heroic defiance meant he almost matched Netrebko for appeal. Baritone Luca Salsi oozed depravity as Scarpia, the police chief determined to take Tosca through seduction or by force.Of the smaller roles, Erika Zaha’s reedy delivery of the shepherd boy’s song before dawn breaks to church bells for matins deserves special mention. Forty years after he debuted at the Verona Arena with Tosca, conductor Daniel Oren stretched out playing and accentuated colour to ensure the drama and atmosphere of Puccini’s score carried in the challenging acoustic of the open-air arena. With better musical standards than in decades, Verona has renewed swagger. Long live the arena’s operatic golden age.★★★★☆To August 30, arena.it
