Farewell to Graham Vick, he made the work current

"You don't need to be educated to be touched, moved and excited by the work": in this sentence, said when receiving an award from the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2016, there is all the essence of Graham Vick's work, the English director who died in London from complications due to Covid. Born in 1953 in Birkenhead near Liverpool, he would have turned 68 on 30 December. For some time he had health problems so much that he had to give up directing the Masked Ball which will open next September the Verdi Festival in Parma which will be dedicated to him. And right at the Teatro Regio di Parma the news was given by the people closest to him, Ron Howell and his manager.

He had had theatrical electrocution at the age of five, seeing a production of Peter Pan in Liverpool, but it was by directing a production of Gustav Holst's Savitri for Scottish Opera that he got noticed. In those years he founded a small company that began to bring the work to inaccessible areas of Scotland. In 1984 he became director of the Scottish Opera, and in the same years he conducted a group of 300 unemployed in Leonardo Bernstein's West Side Story in an abandoned mill in Yorkshire. In 1987 he founded the Birmingham Opera Company, of which he has always remained artistic director even when he took the lead of important events such as the Glyndebourne Festival, where he has remained since 1992 (the year in which his Falstaff inaugurated the Royal Opera House after the restoration) and 2000.His work as a pioneer and experimenter, created to demonstrate that the work speaks to everyone "it is enough to experience it directly first-hand, without filters". No filter between the public and the artists in the Stiffelio created for the Verdi Festival at the 17th century Farnese theater in Parma with the singers moving among the standing audience. Courageous is the Macbeth with which he inaugurated the opera season of La Scala in December 1997, with an abstract setting surmounted by a huge red cube. Memorable the Ring at the Massimo theater in Palermo, the Bohème at the Comunale of Bologna (which, repeated in these days, was dedicated to him).No filter between the public and the artists in the Stiffelio created for the Verdi Festival at the 17th century Farnese theater in Parma with the singers moving among the standing audience. Courageous is the Macbeth with which he inaugurated the opera season of La Scala in December 1997, with an abstract setting surmounted by a huge red cube. Memorable the Ring at the Massimo theater in Palermo, the Bohème at the Comunale of Bologna (which, repeated in these days, was dedicated to him).No filter between the public and the artists in the Stiffelio created for the Verdi Festival at the 17th century Farnese theater in Parma with the singers moving among the standing audience. Courageous is the Macbeth with which he inaugurated the opera season of La Scala in December 1997, with an abstract setting surmounted by a huge red cube. Memorable the Ring at the Massimo theater in Palermo, the Bohème at the Comunale of Bologna (which, repeated in these days, was dedicated to him).repeated in these days, it was dedicated to him).repeated in these days, it was dedicated to him).

It is therefore not surprising the rush of the major Italian theaters, and not only, to pay homage to him. "One of the most significant figures in contemporary direction, a Maestro capable of revealing the strength of the scores he performed and rediscovering their ability to question and move the public" recognized La Scala. He was capable "of bringing to light the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of our life on the notes of scores written centuries ago" added Anna Maria Meo, director general of the Regio di Parma and of the Verdi festival. The Rossini Opera Festival will also be dedicated to him, a "thank you" the Opera di Roma wrote to him. "One of the greatest opera directors in the world, visionary, brilliant, an experimenter" recalled the superintendent of the Maggio Fiorentino Alexander Pereira."An empty roar of sadness assailed us all" tweeted the Teatro la Fenice. "Sir GrahamVick. Thank you" echoes the Opera di Roma. "We are devastated" they wrote from his Birmingham Opera Company asking "to respect the privacy of your partner and loved ones".