Reharsals of the 2008 Salzburg Whitsun Festival Begin

April 23, 2008 (SF). Today, stage rehearsals for the opera Il Matrimonio inaspettato (The Unexpected Wedding) by Giovanni Paisiello begin at the Haus für Mozart, led by stage director Andrea De Rosa. Markus Werba (Giorgino), Alessia Nadin (Vespina), Nicola Alaimo (Tulipano) and Marie-Claude Chappuis (La Contessa di Sarzana) have previously performed the music with Maestro Riccardo Muti in Ravenna. At the end of April, Riccardo Muti will arrive in Salzburg for the final rehearsals with his Orchestra Giovanile “Luigi Cherubini”. The film, theater and opera director Andrea De Rosa, born in 1967 in Naples, began his career as a director of short movies, directed Elektra by Hofmannsthal in Turin and Maria Stuarda in Naples. He made his opera directing debut in 2004 with Mozart’s Idomeneo in Trento and Rovigo. He has previously collaborated with Riccardo Muti on their production of Don Pasquale in 2006 in Ravenna. With his opere buffe, Giovanni Paisiello (1740 – 1816) enthralled all of Europe in the late 18th century. He studied at the Conservatorio S. Onofrio in Naples, where he had his first great success in 1766 with Vedova di bel genio. In St. Petersburg, he was the music teacher of the Grand Duchess and composed for the Tsar’s Court. He returned to Naples via Warsaw, Vienna and Paris in 1783 as the court music director and composer. He wrote more than one hundred operas, including La serva padrona and Il barbiere di Siviglia. In the Opera buffa Il matrimonio inaspettato (which had its world premiere in 1779 in St. Petersburg), Paisiello plays with social masks: Giorgino loves the peasant Vespina, but Giorgino’s father, the rich farmer and newly created nobleman Marchese Tulipano, has determined that his son is to marry the Countess of Sarzana from an ancient family. Tulipano, a pompous but sympathetic character resembling Molière’s Bourgeois gentilhomme, manages to affect an unexpected turn of events after a number of twists and turns. The premiere will take place on Friday, May 9, at 7:30 pm at the Haus für Mozart (second performance on Whitsun Sunday, May 11) Salzburg Festival Ticket Office: Monday - Friday: 9.30 am – 5:00 pm. Tel: +43-(0)662-8045-500.