Cast
Graham Vick — Stage director
Tiziano Mancini — Movie director
Nicola Alaimo — Guillaume Tell
Juan Diego Flórez — Arnold Melcthal
Simón Orfila — Walter Furst
Simone Alberghini — Melcthal
Amanda Forsythe — Jemmy
Program notes
After an early performance of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Wagner told the composer: “You have written music for all times, and that is the best.” Experience Rossini’s masterpiece in a spectacular production at the renowned Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro! An early example of romantic French Grand Opera, the story revolves around William Tell leading the Resistance against the oppressive Austrian official Gessler in 14th-century Switzerland. Director Graham Vick interprets the conflict of the Habsburg oppressors and the oppressed Swiss as a class conflict, transforming it into the drama of a community’s resistance against a political, economic, and military power. Performed in the original French version, the singers are “cast outstandingly down to the tiniest supporting roles" (Duetschlandradio)—with Juan Diego Flórez performing the fiendishly difficult role of Arnold to perfection—and the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna flourish under the skilful baton of Michele Mariotti.
