Triumphant in all senses, Verdi’s everlasting masterpiece, the quintessential opera in so many ways, returns to the Aurora after 13 years, or more importantly a two-year hiatus in opera productions. But now we are making sure this wait was all worth the while as we drop the bomb with this latest announcement!

This autumn’s Aida, on October 15th will flaunt scenery by none other than the world famous opera legend Franco Zeffirelli and splendid costumes by his lifelong colleague Anna Anni. Stage direction will be once again entrusted in the hands of Vivien Hewitt who helped make this unique project possible and who’s set to adapt the original 2001 Zeffirelli staging for Gozo’s Teatru tal-Opra Aurora.

Best remembered for his Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew and Jesus of Nazareth films, Franco Zeffirelli is often associated with colossal operatic stagings like Turandot, Carmen, Traviata and Aida currently packing the Verona Arena. Likewise, Aida is usually perceived as an opera of and for the masses, with oversized choruses and triumphant processions. But, with this particular production, Zeffirelli goes to show how intimate and opera Aida is, even when throngs of people are singing the most rousing of patriotic choruses.

If there’s an opera spectacle that can’t be missed this year, it’s definitely going to be the Zeffirelli (de)signed Aida at the Aurora!

It’s the opera known by who doesn’t know opera at all. But it’s also the opera that has it all for whoever opera occupies the most tender share of his soul. It features a larger-than-life story in an exotic world. It asks for a chorus that can blow the roof out and the house down. Yet it is potentially one of the most intimate operas ever written. Set in Ancient Egypt, with the best elements for lavish costumes and sets, Aida runs on some of the greatest music ever written.

This will not be ‘just another’ Aida. Vivien Hewitt, who first met Zeffirelli in 1989, particularly loves this fabulous 2001 production conceived for the prestigious Verdi Festival at the Teatro Verdi in Busseto and she is looking to create a faithfully Verdian interpretation of this 150-year-old opera masterpiece. She promises to extol the intimate nature of the masterpiece while managing one of the largest opera casts. Her stage direction, will nevertheless concentrate on the emotional relationships and hearth-rending psychological struggles of the main characters.

A Zeffirelli-designed production in Gozo was a question of strategy but also a matter of good planning, timing and optimal use of resources. With opera-productions at the Aurora taking place on an annual basis, every production forms part of a longer-term strategy. Over time, Aurora has moved from a concoction of assembled foreign elements, to opera-from-the-Aurora, proudly brandishing the made-in-Gozo opera label. This time round, in a post-pandemic world of opera, it was the Aurora’s deliberate choice of putting itself on the international map of high calibre productions by restaging this magnificent edition of Aida in Gozo.

So whether your love for opera can never be overrated and you’re in search for something you haven’t yet seen, or whether you’d like to try the opera experience for the first time, let yourself go and secure your tickets now. You’d be surprised how many tickets have already gone at this time of the year!

Meanwhile, Colin Attard directs the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, the Aurora Opera Chorus and an international cast headlined by Italian soprano Serena Farnocchia in the title role. Farnocchia is one of today’s leading Verdi and Puccini sopranos having performed most of the greatest works. However, she is also an acclaimed bel canto singer who has delved into Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini’s music to great critical acclaim. Her performances have been described as filled with “fire” and intense that make “the house shudder.” Little may one wonder why she carries the names of the biggest opera houses on her CV, including the major Italian ones like Rome, Venice and La Scala. Aida’s heart-throb, Radames, will be played by none lesser than Antonello Palombi who debuted as Pinkerton in Germany in 1990 and went to forge a career in the US. In 2006 he took the La Scala stage with aplomb when he covered Roberto Alagna, (in jeans and black shirt), who walked off mid-act and put on a costume to continue the remainder of the opera. His repertoire includes the major opera titles which he performed in major houses all over the globe with notable conductors. In fact, he was also remarkably successful with his Aida at the MET Opera in New York and New Zealand.

The love-triangle in the Aida plot rounds up with Amneris, daughter of the Egyptian King; a role which will see the return of Belarusian mezzo-soprano Oksana Volkova to the Aurora where she is best remembered for her fiery Carmen in 2016 which she performed to wide acclaim. No wonder that since then, she went to debut at the MET Opera in New York and the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden amongst others. The complete cast list includes another recurring name on La Scala opera boards, Piero Terranova as Amonasro, alongside Vladimir Sazdowski, Ramfis, Francesco Leone, the Egyptian King and Malta-based Andriana Yordanova as the High Priestess.