Nabucco

Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate – Take flight, thought, on golden wings. The Hebrew slave chorus from Giuseppe Verdi's new opera Nabucco sang those words for the first time on March 9, 1842 at the Milan Scala, making history in the process. The hopes of a generation of opera-goers were suddenly placed in the young composer when the Slaves Chorus was swiftly accepted as the unofficial national anthem of a not yet unified Italy.

One of Verdi's most well-known operas, King Nebuchadnezzar tells the dramatic story of the Israelites being subjugated under the yoke of King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. Hans Neuenfels last staged the opera at the Deutsche Oper Berlin 13 years ago. Keith Warner, one of the most well-known opera singers in the world, was interpreting the material in 2013, the year of Verdi's birth. The Englishman has directed Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival and The Ring Of The Nibelung at Covent Garden and more recently for the Copenhagen Opera.

Warner's Nabucco focuses on the opposing natures of two nations: the modern Hebrews, whose culture is informed by a script and by education as a democratic ideal, and the militaristic Babylonians, whose concept of a state is founded in autocratic rule. The play is set in the same period as the piece was written, a time of transition from feudalism to a bourgeois, industrializing society.

In Italian language with German and English surtitles.