Verdi Festival in Parma (Register interest) | October 2024

We are delighted to announce the return of this popular ACE tour – which combines wonderful music with cultural highlights and tastes of the region’s gastronomy – in autumn 2024.

Twenty years ago, the city of Parma inaugurated an annual festival to honour its most famous local son, Giuseppe Verdi. The festival, which takes place throughout October (the month of Verdi’s birth), features a range of the composer’s operatic works, both well known and less commonly encountered; it has since become one of the most important showcases of the composer’s music in the world.

Our tour will incorporate several specially selected performances from the 2024 programme, providing an opportunity to experience both the diversity of the composer’s repertoire in the surroundings he knew so well, and his musical development over time. Next year’s operas will include new productions of Un ballo in maschera and the wonderful Macbeth with its famous ‘Witches’ Chorus’. Operas take place in the beautiful Teatro Regio di Parma, designed by Nicola Bettoli, and the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi in Busseto, not far from Verdi’s former villa in Sant’Agata.

Our days, meanwhile, will be spent exploring the musical and cultural treasures of the region, interspersed with free time to reflect on the operas. At Verdi’s villa in Sant’Agata, the ground floor rooms have been preserved as they were in the composer’s time. A day excursion to Cremona will give us the opportunity to discover the town’s famous tradition of violin making, and we also hope to experience the production of one of Parma’s most famous exports at a traditional Culatello cellar.

This tour will be led by Sandy Burnett, MA, a musician and broadcaster who spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3, during which time he interviewed many of the world’s finest musicians. Conducting credits have included a complete cycle of Bach cantatas as well as work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre and in London’s West End where he spent many years as a musical director. Sandy is very much looking forward to introducing a new ACE group to this magnificent festival in 2024.

Included: Full details, including the confirmed itinerary, dates and cost, will be released in early 2024. Please contact the ACE office or use the form to register your interest.

Not Included: