The main theme of this show is power. As well as being a passionate and delirious tribute to great opera arias (from Donizetti to Mozart, and from Rossini to Verdi), Opera Guitta stages a sale of slaves.

The dramatic situation is announced before the beginning of the show: a sign indicates that a sale of slaves is about to take place. The fiction is played out for much of the show, so much so that people are even asked to make an offer.

Thanks to this device, the relationships between the characters on stage evoke the theme of power relations, with extreme consequences, namely the most extreme form of power: oppression.

This situation generates the great comic effect that clowning has used for centuries, based on archetypes: the Augustus, the White, the Monsieur Loyal, and the Counter-Augustus. But the power and possessiveness of the female slave seller also lead to a dramatic situation that generates a series of reflections that the audience often wishes to share with the actors at the end of the show. Spectators are typically able to identify themselves in this theatrical play, and this has a fundamental role in generating these reflections.

Finally, the rivalry between the soprano and the musician, triggered by the female seller, leads to a crescendo of displays of virtuosity, surprises, and acrobatics, culminating with the explosion of the final can-can.

Red as in joy, like the red nose of a clown.

From East to West, the “door” is embedded with wide-ranging and meaningful symbolism. In different cultures, the act of “crossing a threshold” means passing into a new world and the door represents the separation or communication between the two areas: not only does it identify the physical space that separates the outside from the inside, or vice versa, but it is also a passage between two levels, the known and the unknown, the profane and the sacred.

What happens, then, if a clown receives a door as a gift and this becomes a toy that can be opened with imaginary keys?

FUORI-PORTA is a show encompassing pantomime, music, improvisation, and dreams that will encourage us to reflect on the visible and invisible doors that we have opened and closed in our lives. A show that, both in its street-theatre and stage versions, cleverly combines mimic techniques with comic dramaturgy.

The Musicamdo Jazz Orchestra represents a strong sign of rebirth of the territories recently affected by the earthquake.

The Associazione Culturale Musicamdo has been operating in Camerino since 2002, organising a variety of highly successful events and festivals. In September 2018, it founded the Musicamdo Jazz Orchestra composed of 21 professional and non-professional musicians, who share a passion for jazz and a love for the land in which they live. The rehearsals take place in Camerino and Macerata but the orchestra musicians come all the way from the cities around Macerata, the areas most affected by the earthquake.

On the occasion of the Night of the Opera, the Musicamdo Jazz Orchestra will present a repertoire linked to the main theme of the #rossodesiderio evening. There will be songs inspired by great passionate stories and specifically arranged for the big band of composers (all of them mainly – but not exclusively – from the world of jazz): Fever (O. Blackwell – Eddie Cooley), Sunny (J. Hebb), Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (F. Valli), My Cherie Amour (Stevie Wonder), Habanera (Taken from Bizet’s Carmen), and Bolero (Ravel).

The Jazz Tango Trio “Tangofonici” will immerse the audience in the magical world of Argentine tango, a pure expression of both dance and music, celebrating the great masters of Argentine Tango (such as Piazzolla, Pugliese, D’Arienzo, Color Tango, and Canaro) and many other giants of the Argentine tango panorama.

The tango jazz musicians will be accompanied by the choreographed live performances of the Pasion Tango Company/Academy, composed of 10 male and 10 female dancers.

A journey through music, poetry, and dancing that will draw the audience into a whirlwind of strong emotions that only authentic tango can arouse, offering a show permeated with magical lights and colours.

Ophelia chi? is an immersive experience in which the audience members are not merely spectators but protagonists who interact with the projected images. The audience members are provided with visual suggestions and become participants in the show by passing through and manipulating the medium, thus themselves becoming a canvas on which the video is projected; their bodies modify the images by entering into them.

The stories of four different women, whose common denominator is the colour blood red (signifying murder), will be projected onto four screens and the amplifiers will simultaneously reproduce the voices of the four women. The specta(c)tor will then be able to pass through the images-screens and interact with the canvas or simply watch from the outside, as a witness to a ritual.

The video tells a story, and investigates the female figures of theatrical literature. The main source of inspiration comes from Shakespearean female characters, first and foremost Ophelia (an enigmatic creature, according to theatre critics), and Lady Macbeth (a power-mad despot suffering from a delirium of omnipotence, the lady of death). Both are guilty of crimes: the first against herself, the latter against others.

A polyphony of voices enclosed in a single body in which the dialogue, piece by piece, slowly turns into a monologue, without losing its multifarious nature.

L.O.V.E. (Lust – Oblivion- Vanity – Ecstasy), desire through music.

“Love” as in “Love” but also as an acronym for strong desires. Love represented as “the most red” of feelings, the driving force of the greatest passions.

The program includes arias from the operas of the Festival, specifically arranged for the occasion, as well as songs inspired by various passions: the passion for films, with famous soundtracks; the passion for the mystery evoked in Macbeth, with the song “Four Witches in San Diego”; the passion for video games, with a funny and virtuoso medley of popular theme songs. There will also be references to Vivaldi, dubbed the “Red Priest”, and allusions to the colour red as the symbol of life that brings us straight back to the “Music of the Heart”.

The quartet presents songs with a strong experimental flavour, including flutes, piccolos, actors’ voices, and modern vocal effects. At the same time, the arrangements recall well-known rhythms and melodies accessible to a wide audience.

“From the cave comes the sound of weeping (purple on red). His eyes move to the cracked voice (black on red). And the whitewashed cave trembles in gold (white on red).”

                                                                                                                   “The Cave” by Federico Garcia Lorca

If the beauty, strength and wonder that come from Federico Garcia Lorca’s poems were a colour, this colour would undoubtedly be red.

ROJO is a journey through the poems of the great Spanish author, Federico Garcia Lorca. An orchestra on stage. Four instruments: the folk sounds of the accordion; the romantic and melancholic violin; the serious and inclusive double bass; the voice, which comes from the vibration of the strings of the soul.

Sounds vary, as do the colours of the story, but the harmonious blend of poetry and music is like the red of The Cave: the common thread and the passion from which the most violent contrasts arise. Above all, love and death.

ROJO is a captivating show that draws the audience into a succession of emotions: a poignant, melancholic but also vital and cheerful experience, like the poems of Lorca.

Through a playful show that is both performative and scenographic, the Woman in Red project aims to take Bizet’s work out of its own space, to hybridize with everyday life and the passing of time.

This project seeks to shed light on the topicality of the figure of Carmen and her courage, giving her a role that differs from the femme fatale, to which she is often relegated. The aim is to tell the story of this woman starting from the great dramatic aria… En vain pour éviter les réponses amères, which celebrates the role of destiny and its inevitability.

Carmen touchingly explains how “la mort” awaits her along with her lover. Here the gypsy is a true character of tragedy, because she accepts her own destiny, aware that she has unsettled the ‘natural’ order of the world (albeit here “the world” is just the lethal microcosm of Don José’s vestry). Carmen knows that her fate is inevitable; she is not and cannot be peaceful, but she will not hold back.

Surrounded by candles, an actress dressed as a gypsy and dressed in a red lace veil (which recalls the Spanish mantilla) sits alone at a table, on which five cards have been laid. Each one represents a highlight of Carmen’s life. The clairvoyant only breaks the silence when someone stops by and chooses a card.

At that point, the fragment of the opera linked to the chosen card is narrated, but it is disconnected from the chronological order of events. To have the complete picture and reconstruct the original temporality of the narration, the spectator can do nothing but call other people over, involve them in the game and force them to choose the cards which are still unturned.