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| There is something very special about outdoor opera. Intense emotions are expressed so beautifully and powerfully in front of the backdrop of a soft summer night. In the twilight undying love seems so real and all the more moving. |
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Whether you are at Verona's more traditional Arena or at one of the more contemporary productions at the Seebühne in Bregenz, Austria, opera's large scale spectacle, its color and emotion, seem to come into even sharper focus when outlined against the night sky and the stars.
As opera houses around the world slowly begin to close their doors for the summer break, the outdoor opera festival season begins. One of the most famous open-air opera venues is, of course, the Arena in Verona.
The festival of Verona, which began in 1913 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi, really is the quintessence of outdoor opera in Europe. It is the largest of the festivals, the longest, and it is, of course, in Italy – the cradle of opera. It does not always have the biggest stars, but the standard is always high. This summer season 2010 includes Carmen, Turandot, Madame Butterfly and Aida.
The Arena in Verona is one of the most famous open-air opera venues.
The Bregenzer Festspiele are also popular amongst opera-lovers. Just one year after the end of the Second World War, the first week-long Festival was held here; the so-called Bregenz Festwoche. The inaugural performance was staged on two barges moored on Lake Constance – one carrying the stage structures for the production, the other barge held the orchestra.
In this initial year, visitors from Austria, Germany, Switzerland and France already made the Festival an international event. The Festival orchestra was the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, lending the festival a certain caliber from the outset and attracting a wide range of fans.
But it is not only the world of opera that is looking to stage things out of doors. In recent weeks we have also seen how the EU wants to get certain things out in to the open too.
The results of the European Council Meeting held in mid-June, took the important decision to publish the results of the so-called "stress tests" on Europe’s largest banks. Facing pressure from markets, the EU agreed to publish the details of these stress tests and to significantly raise the number of European banks being tested from 26 to well over 100.
The immediate danger for banks is that publication would, of course, expose the extent of any existing problems. However, the overriding feeling seems to be that it is worth running this risk.
In the words of José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission: “this (the publication of the results of the stress tests) should reassure investors by either lifting unfounded suspicion or by dealing with the remaining problems that may exist.”
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