MAYOR GIULIANI KICKS OFF VIVA, VERDI! FESTIVAL SEASON IN CENTRAL PARK
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani kicked off the fourth season of the Central Park Viva, Verdi! Festival tonight preceding a performance by the New York Grand Opera of Verdi's 11th opera, "I Masnadieri." The event was held at the Central Park Summerstage where the New York Grand Opera is in its 24th year of public performance. The company has performed ten Verdi operas since the Viva, Verdi! Festival started in 1994. This summer, four Verdi operas will be performed uncut and in chronological order.
Joining the Mayor tonight was Parks Department Commissioner Henry Stern and New York Grand Opera Director and Founder Vincent LaSelva.
"For 24 successive summers, ever since Vincent LaSelva founded the company in 1973, the spectacular music of the New York Grand Opera has filled the Park," Mayor Giuliani said. "As high art, grand opera is quite expensive. Frequently its cost makes it accessible only to a privileged few. On glorious nights like tonight, the New York Grand Opera changes all that."
"This opera was first performed 150 years ago this month at Her Majesty's Theater in London, and its tale is timeless," continued the Mayor. "Verdi said 'It may be a good thing to copy reality; but to invent reality is much, much better.' Tonight, the New York Grand Opera brings Verdi's spectacular reality alive again for all New York City."
Tonight's performance of "I Masnadieri" was a fully staged, professional undertaking with a full orchestra and costumes. The opera has not been performed in New York City for nine years. It is the 11th out of 28 operas composed by Giuseppe Verdi. The remaining 17 operas will be performed by the New York Grand Opera over the course of this summer and the next three summers.
The New York Grand Opera was established in 1973 by world-renowned conductor and director Vincent LaSelva. The company has had 133 performances in Central Park and has performed there for more than one-and-a-half million people.
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