A Double Revival

Respighi's 'Sunken Bell' in Cagliari
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

I saw a double revival on 1 April 2016, in the capital of Sardinia. First of all, the revival of the Teatro Lirico, after nearly ten years of decadence; now, under a new management and a new artistic direction, the theatre features a comparatively short opera season (but important co-productions such as with the Parisian Théâtre du Châtelet, the Deutsche Opera am Reihm and the Tokyo Ballet) as well as an attractive concert program. In a comparatively small town (some one hundred and fifty thousand residents), the opera season has seven subscription series — a good achievement for a theatre with an audience capacity of one thousand five hundred. The second revival was one of the ten operas of Ottorino Respighi (born Bologna 1879, died Rome 1836), La Campana Sommersa ('The Sunken Bell'), quite successful in Germany, New York, Buenos Aires, Rome, Milan, Bologna and elsewhere in the nineteen thirties, but thereafter forgotten until a major rediscovery, in a concert version, at the Radio France Festival in Montpellier in 2002...

OTTORINO RESPIGHI

ITALY