Live Broadcast of Wexford Festival Opera on Lyric FM

(Tuesday November 3, 2009) Here’s another chance to listen to one of the highlights of this year’s Opera Festival ‘Maria Padilla’.

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Saturday November 7 at 8pm, Lyric FM will broadcast a recorded performance of ‘Maria Padilla’ by Donizetti.  Critics from across the globe have praised this magnificent, but rarely performed melodrama, especially the ‘stylish conducting’ of Artistic Director/Conductor, David Agler and ‘vocal brilliance’ of American Soprano Barbara Quintiliani. The performances can also be listened to on-line at http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/operanight/.
With music of great emotional intensity coupled with a new, more developed interplay between lyricism and declamation, the opera demonstrates the full power of Donizetti’s mature style. A tragic tale of family honour, Maria Padilla features the wooing and attempted abduction of its heroine by King Pedro the Cruel of Spain. George Bernard Shaw famously suggested that Italian opera plots are invariably about a soprano and a tenor who want to make love, and a baritone who wants to stop them. But here it is the tenor, Maria’s aged father Don Ruiz, who presents the obstacle to the marriage that the baritone Pedro promises Maria. Maria Padilla also features some telling examples of Spanish local colour, but is at heart a dark opera with a dramatic climax worthy of Lucia.

Maria Padilla - Cast

Donna Maria Padilla (s) Barbara Quintiliani
Donna Ines Padilla (ms)                      Ketevan Kemoklidze                
Don Pedro (bar)                              Marco Caria                            
Don Ruiz di Padilla (t)                      Adriano Graziani                                
Don Ramiro (b)                              Vittorio Prato                          
Francisca (ms)                                Annie Gill                              
Don Luigi (t)                                  Paulo Paolillo                          
Don Alfonso di Pardo (b)                    Bradley Smoak

Conductor                                     David Agler                            
Director                                       Marco Gandini                        
Designer Set                                 Mauro Tinti                            
Designer Costume                           Silvia Aymonino                      

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