Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra to sing in Moscow

MOSCOW, December 28 (Itar-Tass) - Prominent Italian opera singer
Salvatore Licitra will perform in the Russian capital for the first time
on Tuesday. The tenor's only concert is to be given in the Svetlanov Hall
at the Moscow International House of Music.
The singer will be accompanied by the State Symphony Orchestra New
Russia. In place of Yuri Bashmet, artistic director of the Orchestra, the
concert will be held under the baton of yet another guest from Italy,
Lorenzo Coladonato who is the leader of the Baden Baden Philharmonic
Orchestra.
Organizers say Licitra will sing both solo and a duet with a Russian
singer, soprano Yulia Savrasova, soloist at the Academy of Young Opera
Singers of the Maryinsky Theatre.
The classical music soiree is to be held traditionally in two parts.
The first part of the concert will be dedicated entirely to operas by
Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, and the second part will consist of arias
from operas by Pietro Mascagni, Giacomo Puccini, Alfredo Catalani, and
Ruggero Leoncavallo.
Salvatore Licitra, 33, is reckoned one of the world's leading tenors.
The singer is often referred to as successor to the "great Luciano". In
1998 he made a debut in Verdi's opera A Masked Ball in Parma, and already
in 1999 he sang solo in Verdi's The Force of Destiny in La Scala as staged
by the famous Riccardo Muti. A still greater success attended the tenor in
May 2002 when he sang at the Metropolitan Opera in place of the great
Luciano Pavarotti in the part of Cavaradossi (Tosca by Puccini). After
that the singer received proposals from the Vienna, Zurich, Munich, and
Berlin Operas, La Scala, Covent Garden and other operatic art centers of
the world.
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