Most recent performance
There are currently no scheduled performances of Simon Boccanegra. It was last on stage 15 November—10 December 2018 as part of the Autumn 2018/19 season.
The Story
The dashing corsair Simon Boccanegra and Maria, daughter of the nobleman Jacopo Fiesco, have fallen in love and had an illegitimate daughter. The child has disappeared from her foster-home. Boccanegra returns to Genoa to break the news to Maria, and learns of her death as a crowd, led by the plebeian Paolo Albiani, proclaim him Doge of Genoa.
Read more… (Contains spoilers)
Background
Verdi began work on Simon Boccanegra in 1856. His literary source was a play by the Spanish writer Antonio García Gutiérrez, in which intense familial relationships play out against a background of political tension - always a favourite scenario for Verdi. The original version of the opera (1857) was unsuccessful. More than twenty years later, Verdi revised Boccanegra with the help of Arrigo Boito, his librettist for the later Otello and Falstaff. Among other changes, they introduced the great Council Chamber scene that closes Act I. The revised Boccanegra's 1881 premiere at La Scala, Milan, was a considerable success.
Simon Boccanegra is one of Verdi's most subtly powerful works, in which large-scale choral episodes, such as the Council Chamber scene, contrast with passages of tender intimacy, including Amelia and Boccanegra's ecstatic Act I duet. Elijah Moshinsky's handsome production is inspired by Renaissance art and architecture. Images of the sea - which Moshinsky sees as a metaphor for mortality - recur throughout.
News and features
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Your Reaction: What did you think of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra 2018?
16 November 2018
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Verdi and Boito: the fiery friendship that produced two great final operas
28 June 2017
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Verdi unpacked: A guide to the master of Italian opera
21 May 2015
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Musical highlight: ‘Orfanella il tetto umile…Figlia! A tal nome palpito’ from Simon Boccanegra
27 June 2013