Meli and Salsi at La Scala: A Verdi Recital

A recital for two voices and piano, scheduled at the Teatro alla Scala the June 21, 2026, built almost entirely on Verdi. Francesco Meli is Luca Salsi — among the most authoritative tenors and baritones on the contemporary Italian scene — go through three works from Verdi's maturity, with the piano of Nelson Calzi.

The program opens with pages from Don Carlo: arias and duets that mark the dramatic core of the opera, from Rodrigo's aria to the confrontation between the two protagonists, up to the final scene of the fourth act. Verdi wrote this opera for Paris in 1867, on a libretto taken from Schiller, and subjected it to profound revisions in the following decades. The duet God, who instills in the soul It is the moment of greatest lyrical tension: two voices entwined in an oath that history will make impossible to keep.

In the middle of the program, two Lisztian inserts: the Liebeslied in the transcription S 566 and the paraphrase from Rigoletto S 434. The latter, built on the quartet of the third act, was composed around the 1859 — eight years after the opera's premiere, which took place at the Fenice in 1851 —and published the following year.

The second part focuses on The force of Destiny is Othello. From the first, the great arias of Don Alvaro and Don Carlo di Vargas. From Othello, the Moor's monologue in the third act and the I believe by Iago. The great final duet, Yes, by the marble sky I swear, closes the recital.