NOSPR / Lawrence Foster / Gioachino Rossini, Giuseppe Verdi - NOSPR

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Event participants are obliged to submit a completed declaration prior to the concert. You can download the declaration

Event participant statement - covid (docx)

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As early as the 19th century, naturalists tried to salvage the magpie's tarnished reputation. Servants from poor homes have for centuries been victims of suspicion of theft in the homes of their hosts. In the era of Rossini, there was a famous story about a girl from the suburban town of Palaiseau, who was sentenced to death for appropriating some silverware from a dinner service. “The Thieving Magpie” marked a turning point in Rossini's career: as a tale of ordinary people, it paved the way for, among others, Verdi's “Trilogia popolare”, decades later. The first link in this triad was “Rigoletto” with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on Victor Hugo's drama “The King Amuses Himself”. Verdi gained psychological depth of his characters by purely musical means, breaking with the previous predictability of operatic characters. Stereotypes are there to be broken: whether they are about thieving magpies and wrongly accused servants, or about inwardly torn schemers and their beloved daughters.