The artistic directors, representing the partner institutions of the Creative Europe funded project Opera InCanto, and 14 young professional singers, selected via an international call for auditions, met in Tirana from 13 to 17 February for one intensive training week to prepare the performance of Turandot by Giacomo Puccini. The production will premiere at Teatro La Pergola in Florence on 7 May 2019. 

This production will feature performances of young conservatoire graduates who will sing along with hundreds of enthusiastic children from local schools. The training in Tirana ended with a public concert of the singers attending the masterclass with the Orchestra "Gjenerata e re” directed by Germano Neri (Europa InCanto) and Ricardo Casero Garrigues (Orchestra Renino de Aragòn) at the Theatre of the Orthodox Church in Tirana. The concert was attended by 300 people including local and international authorities and ambassadors.

The international cast, which will be selected in the coming months, will perform in Croatia, Spain and Germany in the second year of the project, when thousands of children in these countries will learn and sing along the most famous arias of Turandot in local theatres. Next month project partners will be invited to Italy, to follow the training of children from 6 to 11 years old in Italian primary schools, in order to replicate the Opera InCanto methodology in their countries starting from September.

AEC has completed the project Communication Strategy and has forwarded it to all partners for implementation. The project will be presented at the AEC Annual Meeting for International Relations Coordinators 2019 (Prague, HAMU, 19-22 September) and at the AEC Congress and General Assembly 2019 (Turin, Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, 7-9 November).

For more information, visit the Opera InCanto website!