Work: Nabucco – Giuseppe Verdi
Opera House: Vienna State Opera
Conductor: Marco Armiliato
Production: Günter Krämer
Stage design: Manfred Voss, Petra Buchholz
Costume design: Falk Bauer
Lighting design: Manfred Voss
Chorus Master: Thomas Lang
Cast:
Nabucco – Amartuvshin Enkhbat
Abigaille – Anna Netrebko
Ismaele – Ivan Magrì
Zaccaria – Alexander Vinogradov
Fenena – Monika Bohinec
High Priest of Bel – Dan Paul Dumitrescu
Streaming platform: Vienna State Opera Play
Availability: Live stream, March 5, 19 Hs. (free with registration) + available on demand for 72 hours
Verdi’s breakthrough opera returns to Vienna in Günter Krämer’s visually distinctive production, conducted by Marco Armiliato and led by a high-profile cast headed by Anna Netrebko as Abigaille and Amartuvshin Enkhbat in the title role.
First performed in 1842, Nabucco marked a decisive moment in Giuseppe Verdi’s career. The opera combines forceful dramatic writing with expansive choral scenes — most famously “Va, pensiero” — and a vocal style that retains the Italian bel canto tradition while pushing toward a more urgent, public theatrical language.
Krämer’s production places a strong visual emphasis on Hebrew letters and projected texts that fill the entire stage space. As Nabucco’s authority and mental stability collapse, these texts blur, slip and dissolve, mirroring the king’s internal disintegration. The result is a staging that links political power, religious identity and psychological fracture in a single visual metaphor.
Musically, Verdi’s score already reveals many of the elements that would define his mature style: direct dramatic propulsion, large-scale choral architecture and sharply etched character writing. In this performance, Marco Armiliato leads the Vienna State Opera forces in a reading that foregrounds the opera’s sweeping contrasts — from prophetic solemnity to explosive confrontation.
The live stream is free to watch with prior registration via the Vienna State Opera’s streaming platform and remains available for 72 hours after the broadcast.
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