The artists, selected out of 181 candidates, will perform L’elisir d’amore in October

Ópera de Tenerife has chosen the ten singers who will take part in the 7th Opera (e)Studio. The artists were chosen out of 181 candidates who attended auditions in Bologna, Tbilisi, Madrid and Tenerife last February, under the supervision of the programme’s artistic director Giulio Zappa. This year Teatro Comunale di Bologna and Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theatre are partners in the project, which is funded by the European Commission programme, Creative Europe.

The organizers have chosen ten singers who will be landing on the Island in early September in order to get intensive comprehensive training that will lead to four performances of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at Auditorio de Tenerife.

The singers chosen and their role are as follows: Maria Rita Combattelli and Beatriz de Sousa (Adina); Klodjan Kaçani and César Arrieta (Nemorino); Alberto Bonifazio and Jacobo Ochoa (Belcore); Givi Gigineishvili and Matteo Andrea Mollica (Dulcamara); Sofía Esparza and Eleonora Boaretto (Giannetta). This year, there have been 181 candidates from 33 different countries and the singers chosen come from Albania, Colombia, Spain, Georgia, Italy, Portugal and Venezuela.

While on the Island, the singers will learn about all the different disciplines involved in opera; they will work on different musical and stage performance techniques, style, diction, body language, theatrical nature of the role, historical context of the composition, dramaturgy, or libretto studying, among other aspects. After being performed in Tenerife from 24 to 27 October, next year the production will travel to Tbilisi, where it will be put on four times (between 25 February and 1 March) and Bologna, with six performance between 5 and 11 April.

Ópera (e)Studio is a programme set up by Ópera de Tenerife in 2013 with the aim of boosting young talent through comprehensive artistic improvement. Its permanent base is at Auditorio de Tenerife and in the previous six years it staged Così fan tutte [2013], La Cenerentola [2014], Le nozze di Figaro [2015], Don Pasquale [2016], I Capuleti e i Montecchi [2017] and L’italiana in Algeri [2018].

L’elisir d’amore is Donizetti’s highly popular opera buffa and it includes the most famous aria for tenor ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ in addition to a lively plot where the love troubles of beautiful Adina and gullible Nemorino meet with the ploys of trickster Dulcamara and Sargeant Belcore’s jealousy. Pablo Maritano is the production’s stage designer and his scenography will transport us to the golden age of cinema. The musical director is Antonio Méndez, principal conductor of Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife.