Kings, Queens, and their Favourites..or, how, in these times of pandemic, our artists do not give up.Since Bastarda, the ambitious Donizetti project (on the life of Elizabeth I) was put off, the team has set up a new project, close to the initial one that will be performed on streaming. You will be able to spend two evenings sitting comfortably in your sitting room, watching the best moments of Rossini’s Elisabetta, Regina d’inghilterra, and Donizetti’s La favorita  through the eyes of a privileged spectator: a child who was excited at the idea of attending these performances. With the bel canto repertoire as the storyline and a marvelous cast on stage, this double production explores the conflict between love and power, through emblematic figures like Elizabeth I.

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THE QUEEN AND HER FAVORITE

In Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra (1815), Giacomo Rossini’s first opera for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, we rediscover Elizabeth Tudor: after a military victory in Scotland, she learns that Leicester, her protégé, has married in secret. Scenes of betrayal and sacrifices follow, but Elizabeth finally forgives her favorite and tries to forget that she is a woman before she is a queen. « Fuggi amor da questo seno / non turbar più il viver moi.’( Let love flee from my heart and no longer torment my life.).

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THE KING AND HIS FAVORITE

Outside Italy, La Favorita is better known in its initial version in French that Gaetano Donizetti had composed for the Opéra de Paris (1840).​​