Ten minutes of applause at the Antico Theater of Taormina for “La Traviata” by Giuseppe Verdi who was staged last night in the new setting signed by the director and scenographer Enrico Castiglione. An audience of the great occasions has applauded the staging with continuous applause on the open scene, at the end of the end long and warm applause to the entire cast and above all to an extraordinary Besa Luigiqi in the impervious role of Violetta Valery, faced with a warm and powerful voice that has conquered the thousands of spectators present since the “toast” of the first act, together with Raffaele Abete, excellent and elegant by the mighty, Gangsoon Kim in the role of his father Giorgio Germont.
The choice of Enrico Castiglione to build the scenography for this first traviata at the Antico Theater of Taormina with thousands and thousands of camellias was winning and above all in the third act he offered vision a heart formed by the camellias that Violetta, before dying, destroys during the bacchanal. A strong and exciting scene that triggered the audience in a long applause on the open scene.
The Traviata was directed with Piglio and Energica Passione by Stefano Vignati, driving the Taormina Opera Festival orchestra of the Italian Lyric Choir Vincenzo Bellini instructed by Pietro Valguarnera. On stage applause on the scene also open for the Koreos Ballet Corps directed by Dario Biuso.
Enrico Castiglione had never staged Verdi’s masterpiece in Taormina in his 13 years of shows for Taormina Arte and for the Taormina Opera Festival, where he signed a memorable operations always transmitted by Rai and the major international and live television networks in theaters all over the world.
Lara Rotili was a credible flora and very present was also Luciano Buono in the role of Gastone, the tests of Elena Sciancalepore in Annina, Calafiore Natale in Baron Doupholl, Fulvio Bumbalo in the Marquis of Obigny, Francesco Palmieri in Dr. Grenevil, and Sergio La Spina, Fabio La Monica and Domenico Oliva in the roles of the supporting actors, also excellent.
For his first traviata at the Antico Theater in Taormina, Enrico Castiglione imagined an evocative scenography with a strong emotional impact, filling the enormous stage of over forty meters of Boccasse with thousands and thousands of fifteen Camelia flowers, five thousand, sublimating the flower of the Camelia proper to the novel the lady of the camellias of Alexandre Dumas from which Francesco Maria Booklet for Giuseppe Verdi. The flowers, all strictly white, have built an act of act in progress an imaginative scenography in which he lives, loves and dies Violetta, courtesan that today we would call escort, prisoner of his fatal fate.
The installation witnessed numerous superintendents and artistic directors from all over the world, from the New York City Opera, for which Enrico Castiglione will stage Carmen on September 4, 2025 in New York, to the work of Hong Kong, from Carlo Felice in Genoa to Beijing’s work.
The Taormina Opera Festival kicked off the day before, with the concert in homage to Ennio Morricone directed with great success by Stefano Sovrani, celebrating the great composer five years after his death, which took place in 2020, offering his most famous soundtracks performed by an orchestra of over eighty elements formed by many musicians who have had the opportunity to work and record precisely in the direction of Ennio Morricone. A very heartfelt and participated tribute to Taormina, where Morricone was personally present with various concerts, invited for the first time by Enrico Castiglione during his direction of Taormina Arte, who also saw the acclaimed participation of the soprano Bing Bing Wang and the mezzosoprano Lucia Mastromarino, also engaged in the song “” of which she herself wrote the text, highly appreciated by the public.
The Taormina Opera Festival will always continue in Taormina with a new series of opera concerts starting from 12 September at the theater of Palazzo dei Congressi, and then returned to the magnificent setting of the Antico Theater in Taormina with an intense final week of concerts and events in early October.