A new production at the National Opera in Paris.
Calixto Bieito, the most Shakespearian of opera directors, brings humanism and truth in a work infested with the sparkling images of the sea.
The ambiguities of Verdi's theater are particularly evident in his bariton roles, including that of Boccanegra, corsair doge of Genoa and troubled observer of the conflicts that tore the landowners and the fourteenth-century peasants.
Simon Boccanegra -an eminently political work, in which struggles for power intertwine with family conflicts-,  echoes the life of its composer, the man who defended the cause of the unification of Italy and overcame the loss of his wife and children.