Arena di Verona Festival postponed to 2021, but 2020 won't be quiet

The Arena di Verona Festival planned for this year has been postponed to 2021, due to the health emergency and regulatory requirements: so the 2021 edition will be a rich one, with the productions originally planned for the 2020 Festival and the addition of more top-notch events.

However, the Arena di Verona Foundation has declared that “2020 will not be a silent year”: an innovative and unprecedented project entitled Nel Cuore della Musica (In the Heart of Music) has been planned for the summer, in August, and many artists, friends of the Arena, have already confirmed their support. These include Ezio Bosso, Placido Domingo, Vittorio Grigolo, Anna Netrebko, Marina Rebeka, María José Siri, Sonya Yoncheva and many others.

These will be event evenings with the stage positioned in the center of the stalls and the audience well spaced out and distributed exclusively in the stands. The project will combine artistic needs with health and spacing requirements. The program will feature international stars and Italian excellences on stage: dates will be announced soon, when the necessary permissions are obtained.

Those who have already purchased tickets for the 2020 Season can obtain the necessary information by checking www.arena.it, writing to ServizioClienti@geticket.it or calling 0458005151. People will be able to move their ticket to their chosen title in the 2021 Festival or donate their ticket; starting June 15, they will be able to apply for a voucher in the amount of the ticket they hold.

“2020 will be the year that will see a kind of Extraordinary Edition in the Arena,” said Federico Sboarina, mayor and president of Fondazione Arena. “A proposal of performances such as we have never seen before and that will also allow us to enhance the spectacular nature of our internationally known monument. To completely stop music in the world’s largest open-air theater would be a sacrilege, as well as a serious cultural and economic damage. It happened only during world conflicts, now we are fighting another war, but we will not let the health emergency take away the voice of our artists. We do not want in 2020 a silent Arena. In recent months, together with the entire Board of Directors, we have asked the Foundation’s trustees to commit themselves to giving the public something extraordinary and at the same time respectful of safety regulations and budgetary balances. We have succeeded, and now only the last mile is missing, the date from the government on the resumption of activities. Everything will be there safely: artists and audiences. The Extraordinary Edition of 2020 is just a foretaste of Verona’s planning capacity and will to be at the center of the artistic scene, continuing in the commitment undertaken three years ago with the raising of quality.”

Cecilia Gasdia, superintendent and artistic director, added, "I am happy to have managed to launch a 2021 playbill, which will contain all the excellences that were present in 2020 enriching them with new names and appointments. As you can see, the season will be opened by a tribute to our queen opera: Aida, on the 150th anniversary of its premiere in Cairo in 1871 and on the 120th anniversary of the death of composer Giuseppe Verdi. The two performances of this Aida in concert form will feature an outstanding cast, which we will reveal by mid-May. Concerning the summer of 2020, it is permissible, deontologically correct, and indeed a duty, not only to dream, but also to plan tactically with great seriousness and responsibility for a safe restart of operations and a reopening with clear rules. We need to prepare for the future with great lucidity, care but without being blocked by fear. In our work, we have been sustained first and foremost by our pride in our country, which, the home of belcanto and music, must soon become a key place in the world for the restart of musical culture. Our big stars have warmly appreciated right from the start the new configuration for this summer, the very ones who know our spaces well. And if the authorities give us the chance, the summer of 2020 will by no means be a minor summer; instead, it will be a different, historic, memorable season because of the new layout that ensures an aesthetic power of great impact and will thus become a symbol of the country’s cultural and social rebirth."

Pictured is a performance ofAida at the Arena in Verona.

Arena di Verona Festival postponed to 2021, but 2020 won't be quiet

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