This evening's performance by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus is supported by the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Fund for Voice and Chorus.

EPSG:4326

Andris Nelsons conducts Tosca

Tanglewood Music Center

“Amore, sommissione, dolcezza” – the traits that Giuseppe Verdi gave his eponymous heroine, Aida, who embodies pure love, tenderness and submissiveness. And these characteristics put her firmly in the tradition of 19th-century female protagonists who were not so much fully rounded personalities as sex objects and a focus for male fantasies, women whose inevitable fate was to die of a broken heart. And Aida is no different.

Aida

Deutsche Oper Berlin

In honeyed tones, Lord and Lady Macbeth reveal their passionate and bizarre emotions to us. But behind this beauty there lurks an abyss, which Verdi unveils with one of the cruelest dramas in the history of world literature. In their struggle to seize power and retain it once it has been usurped, Macbeth and his lady commit one murder after another. The unwavering nature of their desire imbues their love with a radicality that would have been unthinkable on the operatic stage before this work. “The subject matter of this opera is neither political nor religious: it is fantastic,” wrote Verdi and brought Shakespeare’s play closer to a more “romantic” reading. In actual fact, the witches, ghosts and apparitions, the eerie elements, which dominate the musical and dramatic flow, in short the whole world of this opera can be regarded as an outward image of its protagonists’ inner state.

Seok Jong Baek

Events

Upcoming events

Apr 7 - Jul 5, 2026

Macbeth · Bayerische Staatsoper

Past events

Jul 19, 2025

Andris Nelsons conducts Tosca · Tanglewood

3 - 22 May, 2025

Aida · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Future and recently performed repertoire

Cavaradossi in Tosca by Puccini

Tanglewood

Macduff in Macbeth by Verdi

Bayerische Staatsoper

Radames in Aida by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

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