Òpera La fanciulla del West

Puccini opera set in the California gold rush, returning to the Gran Teatre del Liceu with Sondra Radvanovsky as Minnie and Angelo Villari as Dick Johnson.

This Puccini opera is set in the mountains of California during the gold rush, a frontier territory where survival is a daily struggle. Beyond the exoticism of the Western, the work raises a reflection on redemption, forgiveness and human fragility. The production returns to the Liceu after more than four decades without being staged in this theatre.

Minnie runs the Polka Saloon as an almost sacred space: she teaches the Bible, comforts others and upholds an ethical code that functions as law amid the harshness. Her love for Dick Johnson, an outlaw, breaks that order. When she decides to save him from the gallows, the heroine questions her own convictions and opens the way to a form of earthly holiness made of risk and contradiction.

On stage, Sondra Radvanovsky takes the role of Minnie, Angelo Villari that of Dick Johnson and Roman Burdenko that of Jack Rance. Nicola Luisotti conducts and the staging is by Valentina Carrasco. The score, with interwoven vocal lines and an intense orchestration, conveys the characters' inner struggle and the motifs of hope, pain and the fight for a possible future.