Bellini brilliance from Italy for Cape Town and Pretoria
Tuesday, 1 August, 2000
Jenny Mcqueen
Windhoek Friends of the Opera will be hosting a Bellini concert tour with top artists from Italy in South Africa and Namibia in August
Windhoek Friends of the Opera will be hosting a Bellini concert tour with top artists from Italy in South Africa and Namibia in August. The South African concerts are sponsored by Nederburg Wines and bookings open on July 31 at Computicket.
In association with the Unisa Music Foundation, the Pretoria performance takes place at the Sunnyside Theatre Campus at Unisa on August 13. The Cape Town concert - in association with Cape Town Opera and Artscape – is scheduled for the Nico Malan Opera House in Cape Town on August 20.
The artists - Elena Bakanova (soprano), Gregory Bonfatti (tenor), Nikola Mijailovic (baritone) and Alex Esposito (bass) - who have been specifically selected for their ability to perform the music of Vincenzo Bellini, will perform a programme of highlights which will include arias, duets, trios and quartets from Bellinis operas, including La Sonnambula, I Puritani, and Norma. They all have established careers in Europe and will be accompanied on the piano by Maestro Umberto Finazzi, who teaches at the Academy of the Teatro alla Scala and the Conservatorio di Giuseppe Verdi in Milan.
Nederburgs patronage of the arts dates back 30 years with its sponsorship of the Nederburg Opera and Ballet Awards. More recently the focus has shifted to financing selected new productions. Chamber concerts are held at the Nederburg homestead during winter and the company also sponsors the annual Nederburg Knysna Arts Experience, the biggest visual arts festival in the country, during September.
SFW recently won the Business Arts South Africa (BASA) Chairmans Premier award for its consistent and excellent sponsorship of the arts in South Africa through subsidiaries such as Nederburg Wines.
The Windhoek Friends of the Opera was formed in March 1993 with the express aims of promoting opera as an art form in Namibia and to serve the local performing associations. It has presented numerous operatic concerts and two full-scale opera productions, as well as hosting numerous international artists.