Simon Boccanegra

»Simon Boccanegra« ends with an ardent plea for peace. This is preceded by the vigorous portrayal of a seemingly insoluble conflict, a tangled web of political and private problems, which demands victims on both sides. In Genoa of 1339, Maria, the daughter of the venerable patrician family Fiesco, and Boccanegra, a corsair of plebeian birth, have fallen in love. Maria’s father forbids the relationship; the baby daughter of Maria and Boccanegra is abducted by unknown assailants. Twenty years later Boccanegra is elected Doge of the Sea Republic with the sole intention of marrying Maria and reconciling their respective families. Yet in the meantime Maria has died. As Doge, Boccanegra attempts to forge peace between Genoa and Venice and to resolve the conflict within the city between the patricians and the plebeians. He also fights for the happiness of his newly found daughter, Amelia, who has fallen in love with an ally of his arch enemy, Fiesco. Boccanegra pays for his efforts with his life when he is poisoned by a traitor from within his own ranks.
»Simon Boccanegra« is doubtless one of Verdi’s darkest and most fatalistic operas – yet at the same time one in which, at the end, a happy young couple looks optimistically towards the future. To a time of peace.

Melodrama in a prologue and three acts Performed in Italian with German supertitles