Levent Bakirci in revealing Il Prigioniero at Maggio Musicale

Levent Bakirci in Il Prigioniero

Levent Bakirci, who we recently featured starring in the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Teatro Municipal Santiago in Chile, just made his debut at the Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Bakirci is singing the difficult title role in Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero and spends much of the opera in little more than a pair of briefs. 

Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero is a 7-part, 50-minute opera which was first performed on May 3, 1948 for the XIII Maggio Festival, and was considered one of the cornerstones of 20th century musical theater. It was first broadcast by the Italian radio station RAI on December 1, 1949.

The opera has two remaining performances on June 21 and 23. Tickets are available online and start at only € 10. 

Levent Bakirci in Il Prigioniero

The work is based on the short story La torture par l'espérance ("Torture by Hope") from the collection Nouveaux contes cruels by the French writer Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and from La Légende d'Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak by Charles de Coster. Some of the musical material is based on Dallapiccola's 1938 choral work Canti di prigionia. After ruminating on the idea, he started work on the piece in 1939 at the suggestion of his wife Laura.

Bakirci, graduated from the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara before pursuing his career as a singer, including studying at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.

He has performed Don Giovanni at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, where he is an ensemble member, as well as the Theater Bremen, where he was a member of the ensemble from 2008-11. He has appeared at some of the leading opera houses of the world, including the Theatre du Caputole Toulouse, Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Oper Stuttgart, as well as with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester and with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie Orchestra (NDW).