Simon Boccanegra

Zagreb Opera Festival

National Theatre Belgrade

The second edition of the Zagreb Opera Festival will be closed by the National Theater in Belgrade with the opera Simon Boccanegra.

In 1879, publisher Giulio Ricordi wrote to Giuseppe Verdi in the hope of motivating him to revise his 1857 opera Simon Boccanegra and stage it again. I have received a large package which I assume is the score of Simon, Verdi replied, you will find it intact. Ricordi did not give up the idea of persuading the composer, who had decided that Aida would be his last work, to change his mind, so he introduced him to the librettist Arrigo Boita, who aroused not only the composer's interest in writing a new work, but also the hope that he had found a collaborator worthy of revising the opera Simon Boccanegra.

The template for the libretto is the play of the same name by Antonio García Gutiérrez, an author who attracted the composer with a style close to Victor Hugo, which Verdi greatly appreciated. The first version of Simon Boccanegra, by the librettist Francesco Maria Piave, was created at a time when Verdi had already reached the peak of his popularity with Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata, but the premiere of the opera in 1857 was not the success the composer had expected.

When, more than twenty years later, he started working on this opera again with Boita, it was almost like composing a new work. Among the many changes they made, the most significant is the completely new council chamber scene from Act 1 that became the centerpiece of the play. The premiere of Verdi and Boito's version of Simon Boccanegra, held in Milan's La Scala in 1881, was met with great interest by the Italian and international audience. Since then, Boccanegra has been in the repertoire of opera houses around the world, and it was staged for the first time in the National Theater in Belgrade in 2024.

Libretto Francesco Maria Piave
based on a play by Antonio García Gutiérrez