Day: 28 August 2025
Turandot, Puccini Festival 2025, Torre del Lago, Viareggio
**** The staging of Turandot at the 2025 Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago offered a traditional, large-scale interpretation of the composer’s last unfinished work, making the most of its spectacular lakeside setting. Few opera houses can match the visual impact of this open-air amphitheater on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli, with Puccini’s villa, and…
Madama Butterfly at Puccini Festival 2025, Torre del Lago, Viareggio
***** The 2025 staging of Madama Butterfly at the Puccini Festival at Torre del Largo offered a strikingly modern reading of Puccini’s tragedy, recast as a meditation on male dominance and the precarious position of women within patriarchal structures. The Neapolitan soprano Valeria Sepe, drafted in to replace Maria Agresta, proved a revelation. Her Butterfly…