A Celebration of Verdi and Wagner
Year 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the births of two great opera composers: Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. In honour of the occasion, the Opera Festival is staging one of the most popular operas of all times, Verdi’s La traviata. The other Verdi production for 2013 is Macbeth. As a tribute to Wagner, the Festival is reviving the production of Lohengrin directed by Roman Hovenbitzer and premiered in summer 2011. The best-known opera by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, Samson et Dalila is also in the repertoire. The Seal Opera, festival’s fourth opera for children was conceived and devised with children in Finnish junior schools. The Savonlinna Opera Festival has been acting host to visiting opera houses since 1987. In 2013, the Mikhailovsky Theatre from St. Petersburg will be bringing along its production of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and, to culminate the jubilee Verdi year, A Masked Ball.