Royal Opera House: I due Foscari

Plácido Domingo stars in Verdi's sixth opera, a tragedy about a father slowly splitting from the love of his family on one side and his dutiful pledge to a corrupt city on the other. Part of the Royal Opera House 2014/2015 season of productions, filmed live in London and screened in cinemas worldwide.

"Jacopo Foscari, son of the Doge of Venice, is convicted of murder and treason. His wife Lucrezia is sure of his innocence. But the Doge, trapped by the machinations of a corrupt city, is forced to make a terrible decision...

"At its heart is a father's realization that there is nothing he can do to protect his family against the world's cruelties. The 31-year-old composer may well have drawn on his own devastating experience of losing his wife and two infant children a few years earlier. But despite the opera's sombre soul, the music for I due Foscari contains exhilarating forerunners of Verdi's later style – particularly in the fiercely virtuosic writing for the heroine Lucrezia and her magnificent duets with the Doge in Act I and with her doomed husband in Act II." (Royal Opera House)

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