Music + Roundtable

Verdi in Parma

Thursday, December 1
8:00 PM

We welcome Verdi devotee August Ventura, who hosts a screening and discussion of a documentary film-in-progress about one of the great opera composers.
   Giuseppe Verdi may not have known it at the time, but he was already on to something when his first opera premiered in Milan in 1839. By the time his third opera, Nabucco, appeared just three years later, Verdi was beginning to establish himself as an important composer and standard-bearer of the Italian opera tradition while also becoming known as a respected agent of social and political change. He would go on to compose 24 more operas, and his complete output of 27 works would become the backbone of opera literature.
   August Ventura has launched a documentary film project simply titled 27, exploring the unique opera culture of Verdi’s home province in Parma, and the powerful connection with Verdi’s operas that still exists there. Ventura writes, “For the people of Parma, Giuseppe Verdi’s 27 operas transcend art and entertainment to become something of a life force, a moral compass found not just in the composer’s sublime music but also in the example of his extraordinary actions. 27 visits Parma in October when the Maestro’s works are performed before excitable audiences during its annual Festival Verdi." For many throughout the world, “Verdi speaks to our own world with astonishing relevance.”