The 54th Festival dei 2Mondi will be dedicated to its Founder Gian Carlo Menotti, for the hundredth anniversary of his birth.
This year the festival is inaugurated with "Amelia Goes to the Ball" his first big operatic success.
"... Amelia, a young woman immersed in luxury, longs to attend the first ball of the season. Helped by her two maids, Amelia is feverishly preparing to go to the ball. Her husband, who has just discovered she has been unfaithful, demands to know the name of the lover. In exchange for a promise to take her to the ball, Amelia confesses: the lover is the tenant upstairs. Discussions, threats and arguments between the three characters take place. Amelia, exasperated and impatient, as she wants to go to the ball, ends up stunning her husband by hitting him with a vase. Upon arrival of the police, Amelia blames the astonished lover and is thus able to pursue her sole purpose: to go to the ball. It is the gallant and flattered Chief of Police who will then accompany her ...".
"Amelia Goes to the Ball" is a comic opera composed in 1936 on his own libretto. The opera will be conducted by Johannes Debus, directed by Giorgio Ferrara, sets by Gianni Quaranta and costumes by Maurizio Galante with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi.
