Anna Pirozzi returns to Verona with ‘Nabucco’: “An emotion of mine 100th time with Abigaille”

The last year has not been easy for Anna Pirozzi. “I couldn’t wait to start singing again and when I did it was like the first time”, the Neapolitan soprano tells Adnkronos, who on Saturday evening will go up on the stage of the Verona Arena to return to play the role of Abigaille in ‘Nabucco’, under the baton of Daniel Oren and with the collaboration of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah. An important moment for the soprano, who will celebrate her Veronese performance number 100 as the daughter of the Babylonian king. “I have many Abigaille singers but the one on Saturday will be exciting, I will hear it a lot – explains the soprano -. The opera will be set in the 40s during the deportation of the Jews. The direction and the scenography will have very strong moments that recall that very bad historical period “. Considered the most interesting dramatic soprano of her generation, Anna Pirozzi feels like Abigaille in her soul. “She is a strong woman with a great desire for power – he underlines – but she is also a very sensitive character, she just wants a little love from her father and her family”. Of the Verdi character, he explains, “I am fascinated by her change. She begins with a very hard and aggressive character and then ends the work with total sensitivity and remission. The woman in her emerges, we understand that all of her anger was just a shield to bring out her true nature as a sensitive woman in search of love. “The third most represented title ever in the history of the Verona Festival, ‘Nabucco’ is also the work that definitively consecrated the career of Giuseppe Verdi. Written in a period of mourning and profound crisis by the author not even thirty years old, it owes its birth to the insistence of the Scaligero impresario of the time, who forced the genius of Busseto to work on the verses of the librettist Temistocle Solera. The drama is ‘biblical’ since the definition of the libretto and, with allusions and citations to the texts of the Old Testament, narrates the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the deportation of the Jewish people with the prophet Zechariah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. This historical fresco is intertwined with the fictional story of the daughters of Nabucco: the legitimate Fenena and the feral Abigaille, who contends with her half-sister both the Babylonian throne and the love of Ishmael, of the enemy nation. “It is a monumental work, choral – remarks Pirozzi – ‘Va, Pensiero’ is the highlight of the opera, what everyone is waiting for and where you are moved, it is as if it were the national anthem “. The part of Abigaille is one of the most arduous that Verdi has written for a soprano: it requires power, flexibility and agility. But the challenge does not scare Pirozzi, on the contrary. “It is a role that I studied well many years ago – he explains – I know perfectly well the dangers and obstacles of the part, I face it with serenity but with the awareness that it is a difficult role, vocally not comfortable and not perfectly written for a lyric soprano. . There are very difficult octave jumps that you have to know how to solve but it is in my strings, I have been singing it for 10 years and I hope I can continue to do so “. Pirozzi is a living example of how there is no age to fall in love with opera and build on it. on a career. Until the age of 25 Anna was a virtuoso pop singer, then the fulminating encounter with the operatic repertoire. “When I learned of it – he remembers – a world opened up to me. I listened to the voices of Maria Callas di Di Stefano, Del Monaco and I fell in love with them. It was love at first sight and I said ‘I want to sing like that too’. Today here I am. “. After the Conservatory and a very long apprenticeship in provincial theaters, at the age of 36 Anna went on the first important stage at the Regio di Torino in the role of Amelia of the ‘Ballo in Maschera’, and in just 8 years she became the queen of the most prestigious theaters of the world, working with the likes of Muti, Domingo, Metha, Oren, Pizzi, Hugo de Ana. A measurable success just by looking at the agenda for the next few months: “After Verona I will take a summer break and then I will be in Trieste at the Verdi Theater – underlines Pirozzi -. In September I will fly to Tokyo, in October it will be the turn of Munich with ‘ Turandot ‘and then in November I will have a double role at the Royal Opera House in London “. Needless to say, in the role of two other strong and dramatic women: the Luciferian Lady Macbeth and the reckless Tosca. (by Federica Mochi)