Bilbao plays opera in autumn 2024

The ABAO Bilbao Opera season 2024-25 includes Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Puccini’s ‘Il Trittico’ and Wagner’s classic ‘Tristan und Isolde’ in its programme

ABAO is a non-profit company founded in 1953, and they have programmed three great operas for the coming autumn months. They will be performed in the magnificent Palacio Euskalduna.

DONIZETTI

On the 19th, 22nd, 25th, 26th and 28th of October 2024, Don Pasquale, the last of the great Italian comic operas inspired by the Commedia dell’Arte, will be performed. Donizetti proposes a comedy of entanglements centred on four characters: the domineering, foolish and cantankerous Don Pasquale, played by Simón Orfila; the lovers: the naive Ernesto and the cunning Norina, played by Maria José Moreno and Francesco de Muro; and Doctor Malatesta, in the traditional role of mediator and accomplice in intrigues, played by Damián del Castillo.

PUCCINI

On 23, 26 and 29 November (the centenary of the author’s death) and 2 December 2024, ‘Il Trittico’ by Giacomo Puccini.

It brings together three short operas inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: ‘Il Tabarro’, ‘Suor Angelica’ and ‘Gianni Schicchi’. It will be performed by soloists of the stature of Carlos Álvarez, Ángeles Blancas, Marco Berti, Chiara Isotton, Karita Mattila, Ioan Hotea, Stefano Palatchi, Ana Ibarra, Anna Gomá, Sofía Esparza and Itziar de Unda, with the Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa (Bilbao Symphony Orchestra) under the direction of Pedro Halffter, among others.

WAGNER

On the 18th, 21st, 24th and 27th of January 2025, the maximum representation of German romanticism ‘Tristan und Isolde’, by Richard Wagner, a fundamental milestone in lyrical history. The cast includes Oksana Dyka, one of today’s most important dramatic sopranos, as Isolde, and the Welshman Gwytn Hughes Jones as Tristan.

Together with mezzo Daniela Barcellona, Marko Mimica as King Marke and Egils Silins as Kurwenal. Maestro Eric Nielsen will conduct the Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa.

FOR THE LITTLE ONES

The ABAO also organises opera performances at the Teatro Arriaga, specially produced for children over the age of 6.

At the end of November, ‘Peter and the Wolf’ by Sergei Prokofiev. And at the beginning of January, ‘D’Artagnan and the Young Musketeers’.

Donizetti’s ‘La Favorite’ and Verdi’s ‘Otello’ will follow in February.