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Opera

ITALIAN OPERA IS A SPECTACULAR MIX of so many things I love about Italy: rich emotional expression, splendid music and scenery, and gorgeous theaters that bring on transcendent states. It’s well worth the splurge and advance planning to reserve your seat and immerse yourself in this cultural tradition.

Opera began in Italy when a group of radical academics and musicians (the Camerata Fiorentina) got together in Renaissance Florence with a vision to create a new kind of performance, unlike the stiff style of the day. Inspired by the spectacles of ancient Greece, they invented an art form where the focus was the human voice expressing emotion through music, telling high-stakes, dramatic stories.

At first opera was “only for royalty” entertainment, but by early eighteenth-century Venice, regular folks had become avid fans. The shows were as popular as the Broadway musicals of our day. Seventeen Venice opera houses would be filled to the rafters with courtesans, merchants, and noblemen. Though women’s roles were first performed by castrati, soon composers realized they needed real female voices, so out onto the stage stepped Italy’s first divas.

When it comes to opera in Italy, Fred Plotkin is who I go to for advice. He’s a modern-day Renaissance man—an expert on Italian food and wine, classical music, and opera. A native New Yorker, he’s studied and traveled extensively in Italy, and was awarded the title of Cavaliere by Italy’s president, in recognition of his outstanding service to Italian culture through his writing and public lectures.

According to Fred…

Top Destinations for Italian Opera:
La Scala, Milan (www.teatroallascala.org)

We have Empress Maria Theresa, Duchess of Milan, to thank for the construction of this theater in 1778. La Scala is the world’s most famous opera house, where many of Verdi’s operas premiered, and legendary Maria Callas first took the stage in 1950. Today it presents a rich season of popular and lesser-known operas, with international stars.
La Fenice, Venice (www.teatrolafenice.it)
Fenice means phoenix—the mythological bird that rose from the ashes—as the theater was built in 1792 over one that had burned. After another fire in 1996, the building was restored to its original splendor and presents an opera season of classics. Lesser known works can be seen at Teatro Malibran, an elegant 900-seat theater, named after diva Maria Malibran who found the theater in such shoddy shape when she sang there in 1835, that she donated her fee for its restoration.
Rome
Seeing popular operas in Rome’s Baths of Caracalla (www.operaroma.it) is a memorable summer experience.
Naples
San Carlo (www.teatrosancarlo.it) is the oldest opera house in the world, founded in 1737. “I love the passion of the audiences here,” says Plotkin. “Even the intermissions are entertaining. Often in the lobby caffe or garden, chorus members and orchestra musicians join in for the break, so you may find yourself mingling with a violin player or a performer who just played an Ethiopian slave.”
Verona
The Arena Opera Festival, Verona (www.arena.it) is a beautiful summertime experience for tourists to enjoy popular operas in a first-century Roman amphitheater.
Parma
Festival Verdi (www.parmaincomingtravel.com) honors the composer with high quality productions of his operas at Parma’s neobaroque Teatro Reggio, other venues in the beautiful town, and in nearby Busseto, Verdi’s birthplace. The event takes place every autumn and has received the top prize at the International Opera Awards.
Lombardy
Every autumn Opera Lombardia (www.operalombardia.it) presents five operas that tour five provincial towns in the Lombardy region: Brescia, Bergamo, Como, Cremona, and Pavia. “It’s a chance to see the Triple-A teams of opera in wonderful small eighteenth-century theaters, an old-world experience,” Plotkin says.

The Marches

The seaside and mountain towns in this central coast region are home to over seventy teatri storici (historic theaters)—from jewel boxes to arenas, built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries—giving audiences high quality opera in beautiful settings, such as:

Pesaro, the birthplace of Rossini, of The Barber of Seville fame. This is a lovely beach town that’s home to an annual August Rossini Opera Festival (www.rossinioperafestival.it). Four theaters are involved, one from 1637, an auditorium from 1892, and two other modern spaces.
Macerata is a quintessential Italian hill town, loaded with Romanesque, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture. In July and August operas are staged outdoors at its Arena Sferisterio (www.sferisterio.it), a huge neoclassical structure that was built in 1820 for handball games.

So go and cheer Brava! to the Divas. Join in with the natives and call out, “Bis! Bis!” for an encore. Hopefully you won’t hear whistles, which in Italian is the sound that means “Boo!”