Arrigo Boito: Nerone - Bregenz Festival (2021) [Blu-ray]

Arrigo Boito’s libretti, including those for Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff, are some of the most outstanding achievements in operatic history, and his own completed opera Mefistofele has a presence on opera stages.

Boito started working on Nerone in 1862, but struggled to complete it immediately, leaving it unfinished for several decades. It became his life’s work, and it was only after his death that the conductor Arturo Toscanini created a performable version. The world premiere was held at La Scala Milan in 1924, and the opera is here available for the first time on DVD/Blu-ray.

Recorded live at the Bregenz Festival, August 2021

"with punchy, dramatic playing from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Dirk Kaftan, the work is allowed to cast a strange, dark spell that is ultimately difficult to resist" — Gramophone Magazine, September 2022

The high-flying, marathon title role is filled by the late Rafael Rojas, who clearly gives his all. Dirk Kaftan, conducting the Wiener Symphoniker and the Prague Philharmonic Choir, makes a good case for this neglected opera" - Oper Mag, November 2022