Gustavo Porta

Discover this rare Verdian jewel! Aroldo—one of the composer’s least performed works—premiered in 1857 in Rimini, Italy. The work was created in response to the censorship of Verdi’s 1849 Stiffelio, whose tale of a protestant pastor publicly pardonning an adulterer and his wife proved too scandalous for 19th-century Italian society. In creating Aroldo, Verdi’s librettist and collaborator Francesco Maria Piave transposed Stiffelio’s story and characters to the more distant setting of Great Britain at time of the Crusades, and the composer took advantage of this new version to add a fourth act to the opera, and to rewrite part of the first act as well as a few arias.

Tosca comes alive in the open air of Israel’s Negev Desert, staged at the foot of the towering fortress of Masada. Starring Svetla Vassileva as the title heroine, Gustavo Porta as her beloved Cavaradossi, and Sergey Murzaev as the evil police chief, former Paris Opera Director Nicolas Joel’s 2015 production—captured here in 4K (ultra HD)!—reimagined Puccini’s resplendent opera on a breathtaking scale.