The World’s Biggest Celebrities of a Century Ago Come to Life . . . and Sing!

Vissi d’Arte is a stage musical that weaves the world’s greatest opera arias and overtures throughout an energetic story. Considering the popularity of collections of opera highlights and arias, Vissi has appeal for opera neophytes, afficionados, and all those in-between.

The arias in Vissi d’Arte are performed live, but this is no Three Tenors-style concert. The music is incorporated by libretti and themes, as if written especially for the play. (Go to Music for a complete rundown.) The characters and events are based on the lives of real opera personalities of one hundred years ago. Our guides—the ghosts of Enrico Caruso and scrappy diva Frances Alda—escort us from 1906 to 1922 as three love stories unfold, together with comedy, drama, history, and, of course, music.

Imagine such scenes as these . . .

1. The Great Caruso chased by a cop after offending a woman in the Monkey House at the Central Park Zoo—with Rossini’s Barber of Seville overture accompanying his ignoble flight.
   

2. The stormy clash between pretentious Geraldine Farrar and dictatorial Arturo Toscanini, when the soprano informs the conductor that he must follow her lead, because she is a “star.” Soon after, we see their romance bloom during Mozart’s aria of seduction and demurral, “Là ci darem la mano.”
   

3. In a dream sequence while on his death bed, Caruso rises to sing Puccini’s “E lucevan le stelle” as his own farewell to life.
   

. . . and many more!