The second season of the Viva Rossini! 2016 cycle, has come to its fifth and last 2016 screening. The initiative, organized by the Italian Cultural Institute (IIC) in Sydney in conjunction with the Pesaro Rossini Opera Festival- ROF, presented a selection of movies of operas by the famous Italian composer from Pesaro. Matilde of Shabran, or Beauty and Heart of Iron, a melodrama giocoso, will be screened on Friday, 18 November.
The film, directed by Mario Martone, features Michele Mariotti and Lorenzo Fratini, respectively the conductor and chorus master of the Orchestra and Choir of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The interpreters are: Olga Peretyatko (Matilde di Shabran), Anna Goryachova (Edoardo), Marco Filippo Romano (Raimondo Lopez), Juan Diego Florez (Corradino), Simon Orfila (Ginandro), Nicola Alaimo (Aliprando), Paolo Bordogna (Isidoro), Chiara Chialli (Contessa d’Arco), Giorgio Misseri(Egoldo), Ugo Rosati (Rodrigo). The film is a ROF/Unitel Classica production of 2012. Matilde of Shabran is a melodramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Giacomo Ferretti. It premiered in Rome, at the Teatro Apollo on February 24, 1821, to a rather cold reception with the audience. Although Niccolo’ Paganini was the orchestral conductor, and much of the opera’s music was brilliant and original, Matilde of Shabran got has many catcalls in the audience as there was applause. However, over the past century the opera gained in popularity to become one of Rossini’s most widely performed work.
