THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT VERDI
A Multi-Media Presentation with August Ventura

June 15, 2024 / 1:00PM
Bromeley Family Theater, Blaisdell Hall
University of Pittsburgh at Bradford Campus
Free & Open to the Public

Photo by Kyle Ericksen

Still shot from "In the Mouth of the Wolf"

August Ventura will explore Parma's unique embrace of Giuseppe Verdi and his 27 operas in this wildly entertaining multi-media presentation. Ventura draws from his own filmed interviews plus extended sequences from an extraordinary discovery, the long-lost 1963 documentary "In The Mouth of The Wolf."

"In many ways The Horne Museum is the perfect venue for this program.  Not only is Marilyn Horne one of the supreme interpreters of Verdi’s works, but the 1963 film depicts the very postwar Golden Age of opera, and the milieu of its magnificent Italian opera houses, that she knew very very well at the start of her career." 
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August Ventura explores the world of traditional opera in articles, lectures and through the medium of documentary film.  An ardent devotee of the life and works of Giuseppe Verdi, his Verdi-themed presentations have been welcomed before such distinguished organizations as the The American Foundation for Savoy Orders, The United Nations, at prestigious venues as The Century Association, The Lotos Club, The National Arts Club.  Additionally he has presented at the Art Institute of Chicago, at opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, Sarasota Opera and Parma’s Teatro Regio, as well as colleges and Universities and film societies.

Apart from his numerous articles for Opera News, his efforts to promote Verdi’s “enduring legacy" have been written about in The New Yorker, the New York Times, La Gazzetta di Parma, l’Agence France Presse, The India Times, and Radio Free Europe, which profiled him as “Humanitarian of the Day”.