Falstaff directed by Marco Arturo Marelli to be premiered at the Finnish National Opera

This autumn, the Finnish National Opera will premiere a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, based on plays by William Shakespeare. The director and set designer is Marco Arturo Marelli, who previously visited the FNO in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.

was originally premiered at the Vienna State Opera in 2003. He is also the lighting designer of the production, while the costumes are designed by Dagmar Niefind.

The premiere at the FNO will take place on 19 September. The role of Sir John Falstaff will be taken by Roberto de Candia and Marco Chingari, and other cast members include Piero Terranova and Jaakko Kortekangas as Ford, and Tuomas Katajala and Jussi Myllys as Fenton. The three merry wives of the story will be played by Ildikó Raimondi and Anna-Kristiina Kaappola (Mrs. Alice Ford), Hilke Andersen and Nadine Weissmann (Mrs. Quickly), and Lilli Paasikivi and Anna-Lisa Jakobsson (Mrs. Meg Page). The part of the young Nannetta will be taken by Anu Komsi and Kaisa Ranta.

The guest conductor in this production is Pietro Rizzo. He has conducted more than 40 opera productions at the Metropolitan, at the Teatro Communale in Florence and at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. He is currently engaged as Chief Conductor of the Gothenburg Opera in Sweden. He has been visiting the FNO since 2000.

The FNO’s repertoire this autumn also includes Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte, Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier and a new production of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Aleksis Kivi, which tells the story of Finland’s national author, premiering on 12 September. Verdi’s Rigoletto will be returning to the repertoire in October, Bizet’s Carmen in November and Verdi’s La traviata in December. The next premiere will be Rusalka by Antonin Dvořák, directed by Richard Jones, which will be premiered on 28 November.

The Finnish National Ballet will open its autumn with La bayadère by Natalia Makarova. The Great masters - Grands Maîtres triple bill with works by Jiří Kylián and David Dawson will return in September. A new production of Swan Lake by Kenneth Greve, artistic director of the FNB, will be premiered in October. The popular ballet The Nutcracker and the Mouse King will return in December.


Dear representative of the media, please notify the Finnish National Opera press office if you plan to attend a performance and what your ticket requests are at [email protected] or by phone at +358 9 4030 2323.

Marelli’s Falstaff

For more information about our 2008—2009 season, please see www.opera.fi