Recorded live at Wexford Festival Opera 2013.
The life and reign of Queen Christina of Sweden provides the inspiration for Jacopo Foroni’s opera Cristina, regina di Svezia.
Queen Christina was an intelligent and extremely well-educated monarch who played an important role in ending the Thirty Years’ War, one of the longest and most destructive wars in European history.
The events leading up to Christina’s sudden abdication in 1654, including political unrest, conspiracy and her loneliness as monarch, are at the core of Foroni’s opera and are stirringly presented in dramatic orchestral music and lyrical bel canto vocal writing.
Although a native of Verona, Foroni relocated to Stockholm where he spent the last 10 and most successful, years of his life, before his death from cholera at the age of 33.
RTÉ lyric fm, Saturday 9November, 7pm-10pm