From my "Opera Performances" Series: Giulietta e Romeo by Riccardo Zandonai.

Teatro Grattacielo (@teatrograttacielo) in co-production with Battery Park City Authority (@bpcparks).

Last weekend I had the unique opportunity to create these images for the Opera company Teatro Grattacielo. They created this magnificent open air performance in Battery Park, downtown New York.

The setting was espectacular, but more than that was the work Stefanos Koroneos, director of this amazing production, put it together for over a year.

I want to congratulate Stefanos, the whole cast, the orchestra, and technical team for such an achievement.

Also I want to thank Stefanos for allowing me and Dan to shoot this performance.

As I work close to the stage and therefore to the artists, I really have to make an effort to avoid falling under the spell created by the proximity to such a talents and therefore forgetting the work I have to do. It is very tempting to seat and just listen.

Battery Park Stage

Giulietta E Romeo

Tragedia In Tre Atti

Libretto | Arturo Rossato

As Federica Fortunato, scientific director of the Riccardo Zandonai International Study Center in Rovereto wrote, “the story lends itself to being a metaphor for our time: love, tenderness, friendship opposed to the logic of blood and power”. The epilogue is heartbreaking, but in reliving the emotions of Juliet and Romeo we all cultivate the image of that suffocated youth, as a noble response to the perverse conventions of the world. An alternative life in these years of pandemic and with horror in the heart of Europe.

Giulietta e Romeo, 3 acts of love, passion, death and tragedy stripped down to their most pure and intimate. The site-specific production will take place in Robert F. Wagner Jr.Park, Battery Park City, positioned next to New York’s waterfront with one of the most iconic views in the city, the Statue of Liberty in clear view.

With this production Teatro Grattacielo celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the opera, premiered on 14 February 1922 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.