Tenor concert or full opera?

The short answer

A concert and a full opera are different promises. The concert promises music: famous pieces, one after another, each with its own emotion and no need to know what came before. The full opera promises a drama: a plot with characters whose choices carry over from one act to the next. If your question is whether you will enjoy opera, a concert answers it faster. If your question is whether you will enjoy a particular story, only the whole opera answers it. This guide helps you decide which question you are really asking, and it points to the evenings in Florence that answer each one without a long search.

What a concert gives you

Wikipedia treats opera as theatre in which music is essential and the roles are sung. In its account an aria is a formal song, a moment when a character voices an emotion in a more structured melody. A concert of arias lifts those songs out of their plots. You hear the part the opera builds towards, and the booking page for the Nessun dorma concert adds Neapolitan songs, which were never part of an opera at all. The Italian word opera means work, Wikipedia notes, and a concert gives you the finished work of each singer rather than the whole production. The result is a programme of tunes, each complete in itself.

• No plot to follow
• Famous pieces back to back
• A shorter evening than a full opera
• Songs from Naples alongside the arias

What a full opera gives you

Wikipedia says the words of an opera are called the libretto, and that plot-driving passages called recitative are sung in a style that imitates the inflections of speech. A full opera therefore carries the story forward between the arias. The three operas named on the Nessun dorma booking page are each in three acts, according to Wikipedia: La traviata, Rigoletto and Tosca. In a staged production you see the sets, the full cast and the consequences of each choice. That is what the concert, by design, leaves out. None of the three first played in Florence: Wikipedia places La traviata and Rigoletto at La Fenice in Venice, in 1853 and 1851, and Tosca at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1900.

Nessun dorma in the opera and in the concert

In Puccini’s Turandot, Nessun dorma comes in the final act. Wikipedia says the opera has three acts, so a listener at the full opera reaches the aria only after the story has set up Calaf’s riddle-winning triumph and Turandot’s threat to the city. At the concert you reach it directly, as a song of confidence before dawn. Both are valid. The first gives context and the second gives the tune on its own, which is why the aria works so well outside the theatre. Wikipedia notes that Pavarotti’s recording was used as the BBC’s theme for the 1990 World Cup, which carried it far beyond the opera house.

Read next: Nessun dorma, explained

Where full operas are staged in Florence

The city’s modern opera house, the Teatro dell’Opera di Firenze, opened in 2011 and took over for good from the old Teatro Comunale in 2014, Wikipedia reports. Its Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival began in April 1933 and is called Italy’s first music festival and Europe’s oldest after Salzburg’s; it runs from late April into June. The Teatro della Pergola, completed in 1656, is considered the oldest opera house in Italy, though Wikipedia adds that opera is staged there only during the Maggio. Check the opera house’s own calendar for what is playing on your dates.

The middle option: a concert with a host

The Teatro Nazionale Firenze concert is built for newcomers. The booking page describes a pianist, two opera soloists whose voices change each evening, a host who gives stories and behind-the-scenes insights, and projections on an LED wall. Its listed length is about 75 minutes, and a welcome glass of wine and finger foods are listed among its inclusions. The booking page says the theatre was recently restored under the architect Marco Casamonti and that the show is the new programme for its reopening. Reviewers praise the way each piece is introduced before it is sung, which is the very thing one reviewer of the tenors’ concert wished for. It suits listeners who want to know what they are hearing, and it is the shortest of the three evenings.

Length, energy and timing

Both concerts on the booking pages are short: about 1.5 hours for the tenors’ concert and about 75 minutes for the Teatro Nazionale one. A full opera in three acts is a longer sitting, and the running time is posted on the opera house’s calendar for each production. If you are travelling with a tired group, or if you have a morning museum ticket and a late dinner booked, the concert fits around the day. If the opera is the main event of your trip, give it the evening and plan nothing after it. A concert, by contrast, leaves room for a late dinner or a walk to the river afterwards.

Language and preparation

The three operas named on the booking page are all in Italian. Wikipedia gives La traviata’s libretto as Italian, by Francesco Maria Piave, and Tosca’s as Italian, by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa; Turandot, whose aria gives the concert its name, is also in Italian. A concert of arias asks nothing of you beforehand: the music carries the feeling, and a short note on each piece, if the singers give one, is enough. At a full opera, read a plot summary before you go, so you know who is who when the curtain rises. The Wikipedia pages linked at the foot of this guide are a good start, and the Nessun dorma guide on this site retells the plot of Turandot’s last act in a few lines.

Why Florence is the right city to try

Opera was worked out in Florence. Wikipedia says Count Giovanni de’ Bardi hosted the Florentine Camerata at his house, with an earliest recorded meeting on 14 January 1573, and that its members believed reviving ancient Greek dramatic forms could improve music. Their experiments led to the stile recitativo, which became closely tied to opera. Jacopo Peri’s Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598, is called the first opera, though its music is lost, and his Euridice followed in 1600. Florence is where the form started, which is a good reason to hear it here.

Read next: Florence: where opera began

Who this isn’t for

Do not book the tenors’ concert as a substitute for a staged opera, because it will not tell a single story. Do not book a full opera if your companion has never sat through anything longer than a song, because a three-act work is a bigger step. Neither evening is suited to someone who wants a quiet room: reviewers call the tenors’ concert lively and entertaining. If your main aim is to see a famous production with a named cast, check the opera house’s calendar first, because a production and its cast are set by the house, not by this site or by any booking page here.

How to choose in one minute

Decide what you most want. Famous tunes in a historic church, in about an hour and a half: the Nessun dorma concert. The stories behind the arias, told by a host: the Teatro Nazionale concert. A whole drama with sets and a full cast: a staged opera at the opera house, in the Maggio season or the house’s own calendar. Then pick a date, check the start time shown with it and note the cancellation window. All three are reasonable first evenings of opera in the city where opera began, and none requires you to know anything beforehand.

• Famous tunes in a church: the Nessun dorma concert
• The stories behind the arias: the Teatro Nazionale concert
• A whole drama: a staged opera at the opera house