Simon Boccanegra
From: Tuesday, 26th March 2013
To: Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Our Review: 
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Synopsis
Simon Boccanegra, a corsair, and his lover Maria have a child, but Maria dies in childbirth and her father (Fiesco) refuses to acknowledge Boccanegra as his son-in-law. Boccanegra is later elected Doge of Genoa and, as the years pass and his power grows he is plotted against by Fiesco and Adorno (a young nobleman in love with Fiesco's ward). Boccanegro recognises Fiesco's ward as his lost daughter but is poisoned - the parties are reconciled as Boccanegra dies and declares Adorno his successor.
Our Review:
Anne Morley-Priestman - 26 March 2013
Directors – not to mention designers – can find that updating the action of plays and operas is a perilous undertaking. There have been some successes; there are many more failures. It can be that such action presumes that an audience is less intelligent than it really is.
Alright, Simon Boccanegra is not one of the most popular of Verdi's operas – nor does it have the simplest plot but, at any rate in the 1881 revision, it does have some of the composer's great hallmarks, including lyrical father-daughter duets and baritone-bass confrontations. Director James Conway keeps us in Genoa but shifts the action from the mid-14th to the mid-20th century. We're in the aftermath of the Second World War with former partisans at odd with the wealthier members of the community who (perhaps) still hanker after Mussolini's brand of fascism.
Accepting this (for my money, unnecessary) updating, we do have some extremely good...
Creative
Verdi (Music)
English Touring Opera (Company)
Michael Rosewell (Conductor)
James Conway (Director)
Samal Blak (Design)
Ace McCarron (Lighting)
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