Assassinio nella cattedrale

Composer: Pizzetti, Ildebrando

Librettist/Text Author: Eliot, Thomas Stearns

Conductor: Morandi, Pier Giorgio

Orchestra: Bari Symphony Orchestra

Chorus: Conservatorio Piccinni di Bari Children's Chorus

Chorus Master: Aymone, Emanuela

Chorus: Coro A.T.E.R.

Chorus Master: Aymone, Emanuela

Prima Corifea: Marrocu, Paoletta

Seconda Corifea: Zaramella, Sonia

Thomas Becket: Raimondi, Ruggero

Un Araldo: Casalin, Luca

Costume Designer: Arrigo Sartoria Teatrale

Stage Director: Onofrio, Daniele D'

Television Director: Mancini, Tiziano

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Date of Production: 22-12-2006

Venue: Basilica di San Nicola, Bari

Playing Time: 01:25:00

Catalogue Number: A00008650

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What more appropriate venue for Ildebrando Pizzetti's operatic masterwork of 1958 Assassinio nella Cattedrale than the austere, Romanic Basilica di San Nicola in the southern Italian port city of Bari. A striking coincidence: the action of T. S. Eliot's stage play "Murder in the Cathedral", on which the opera is based, takes place in December 1170; the Basilica di San Nicola also dates from the 12th century and was consecrated in 1197...

Pizzetti's religiosity also manifests itself in his choice of T.S. Eliot's modern-day miracle play about St. Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who returns from a seven-year-exile only to be confronted by various torments, including Four Temptations; he succumbs to the fourth, the temptation of martyrdom...

Internationally acclaimed bass-baritone Ruggero Raimondi, at home on all of the world's major stages and unforgotten as Don Giovanni in Joseph Losey's celebrated 1979 film, brings the firmness and authority of his vocal artistry to this role, elevating it to one of the most passionate and intriguing portrayals of a 20th-century operatic hero.