Verdi - Simon Boccanegra - Warner Music Group Germany

"Glyndebourne Festival Opera"
Melodrama in a prologue and three acts

14th-century Genoa is the setting for one of Verdi's grandest works, "Simon Boccanegra", and Peter Hall's elegant production, with its palpable sense of athmosphere evoked by John Gunter's sets and costumes, captures perfectly the shadowy world of scheming power politics, set against a shimmering backdrop of the omnipresent sea.

Two of Verdi's recurring themes - the beauty of family love and the impossibility of even the best-intentional political power - are united in "Simon Boccanegra", an opera whose tenderness und insight can only leave the listener uplifted. Boccanegra's great cry for peace and reconciliation echoes round the world today as powerfully as it did in the divided Italy of his own lifetime.

Music - Giuseppe Verdi
Libretto - Francesco Maria Piave, Arrigo Boito

Paolo Albiani - Peter Sidhom
Pietro - Daniel Borowski
Simon Boccanegra - Giancarlo Pasquetto
Jacopo Fiesco - Alastair Miles
Maria Boccanegra - Elena Prokina
Gabriele Adorno - David Rendall
Amelia's Maid - Yvonne Patrick
A Captain - Kevin Sharp
London Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor - Mark Elder
Director - Peter Hall
Designer - John Gunter
Stage Lighting - Mark Henderson
Lighting Director - Brian Turner
Audio Director - John Middleton
Directed for Video by - Robin Lough

Filmed at Glyndebounre in July 1998