Language: Italian
Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

La Wally is an opera in four acts by composer Alfredo Catalani, to a libretto by Luigi Illica, first performed at La Scala, Milan, on 20 January 1892. It was Catalani's last opera. Wally, short for Walburga, is a girl with some heroic attributes. The story is based on an episode in the life of Tyrolean painter Anna Stainer-Knittel, whom von Hillern met. She got her epithet "Geier" (vulture, the local name for eagle) from having gutted a bearded vulture's nest going down a rope; this dangerous task, aimed at protecting the sheep in the Alpine village, was typically performed by a man.

The opera features a memorable operatic death in which the heroine throws herself into an avalanche. It is seldom performed, partly because of the difficulty of staging this scene, but Wally's principal aria is still sung frequently. It is the fifth and final opera by Alfredo Catalani, who died prematurely the year it premiered. A native of Lucca like the younger Puccini, whom he hated obsessively, the prickly Catalani was associated with musical milieus that explored new, post-Verdian approaches. La Wally is evidence of the various movements that influenced Italian lyric art in the second half of the 19th century. Symptomatic of this desire to break with the heroic model magnificently exploited by Verdi, the libretto is imbued with a German-inspired intimist neo-romantic atmosphere, as demonstrated by the novelistic situations ending in sentimental scenes likely to touch the audience’s sensitivities, the exaltation of nature through the grandiose mountain setting, and a concern for “local colour” in the Tyrolian setting. In it we can recognise the silhouette of Massenet’s Werther, which debuted the month before La Wally premiered.

The story is set in the Austrian Tyrol, where the free-spirited but vulnerable Wally is in love with the handsome Giuseppe Hagenbach. However, her father, Stromminger, wants her to marry Vincenzo Gellner. The opera concludes with Hagenbach and Wally pledging their love for each other but being killed by an avalanche.

Director: Cesare Lievi (Director), Evelino Pidò (Music Conductor)
Cast: Ainhoa Arteta: Wally, Bálint Szabó: Stromminger, Vitaliy Bilvyy: Vincenzo Gellner, Yonghoon Lee: Giuseppe Hagenbach, Ivanna Lesyk-Sadivska: Walter, Ahlima Mhamdi: Afra, Bruno Balmelli: Il Pedone, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Choir of the Grand Théâtre de Genève