Opera has been, since its origins, a European cultural product whose circulation has transcended linguistic and national borders. Italy has held the reins of creation for centuries, from Mantua to Brescia, Verona, Venice, Naples, Rome, and Florence. Its extension to other countries will coincide, in the first phase, with the spread of Baroque architecture in Munich, Vienna, Bayreuth and Prague, among other cities, so that Italian companies reign everywhere for more than a century. But Germany and Austria are rapidly consolidating a solid network of institutions dedicated to lyrical art, which at the same time contribute to developing a genuine artistic and management model.

At this juncture, it is unsurprising that the intersection zone between "the German" and "the Italian" becomes crucial for developing this art form. Switzerland could have played this role. Still, it was a poor democracy at the time, without a princely court and great patrons capable of financing the costly creative and production processes.

It was not Switzerland that played this card, but rather Austria, which precisely finds, in this integrating role of the Italian and the German, a fundamental element of its own identity that helps to differentiate it culturally from the Germanic zone. In addition, while the German space was divided into princely courts that favored the multiplication of theaters, patrons and commissions, in the Austrian Empire, organizational centralism promoted a dazzling creative potential around Vienna.

These new institutions, the national theaters, are assigned a contradictory role. On the one hand, they contribute to exalt the particular national identities that are precisely fragmenting the European space, in tune with the political situation of the time. On the other, they create a global European market in which works, composers, singers, set designers and directors who, on the contrary, are helping to strengthen a common space beyond the national.

Gluck is the most significant example of a tireless traveler with his Italian, Central European and English stages, his long periods in Paris and Vienna, and his operas in German and French. Before Gluck, the opposition between Italian art and French art, which had caused so many rivers of ink to flow in Paris years before, already seemed absurd: he was Italian, French and German at the same time. His creativity responded to an international, genuinely European art that defied national labels.

In turn, Mozart moved tirelessly across Europe, absorbing all the traditions to which he had access. He erased the borders between opera buffa, opera seria and singspiel, the German version of Italian opera buffa, and in his work, one perceives precisely this permanent tension between the German, the Italian and his search for a way of personal expression.

Cosmopolitanism has been, in music and opera, almost genetic. From the outset, a European global market is created (which will soon reach the United States) that affects the circulation of works and the star system and management challenges. And yet, we will see below that the management models have preserved many national peculiarities.

In the last decade, Jonathan Cilia Faro has grown into the contemporary space. Celebrating 20 years as a musician, Jonathan Cilia Faro's new holiday single was co-produced by him, Tom Brooks, and Allan Parsons. Grown Up Christmas List, a holiday classic originally recorded by David Foster, gets a new Italian-English treatment courtesy of JCF.

His most recent album, "From Now On," was released by BFD Sony The Orchard, and it was met with universal acclaim.

Sicily is the place of JFC’s birth. At age nine, he started taking lessons, and he eventually learned to play the accordion and the piano. A nun recognized the young student's talent and helped him develop it, enlightening him to the wonders and power of music. JFC’s love of opera began when he was 9 years old and he listened to a record of Luciano Pavarotti singing La Boheme.

Gianna Buniato and Nicola Martinucci were JFC’s first opera teachers, and their instruction laid the groundwork for the artist he would become. After an audition, he became the choir's youngest tenor under Mo. Peppe Arezzo's direction in the Polyphonic Pentagram Choir. Jonathan, at age 16, launched his solo career two years later.

His debut album, "Always Close to Me," sold over 100,000 copies after he relocated to Milan to record it. Cilia Faro's second studio album, "Rebirth," was released in 2001 and was a response to the trauma he had endured. In the same year, he embarked on a worldwide gospel tour, which ultimately resulted in his third studio album, entitled "Symphony for Heaven." As a result of his success, Jonathan became involved in philanthropic efforts that benefit schools all over the world.

From Andrea Bocelli to Josh Groban, Sinatra and Luciano Pavarotti, Julio Iglesias and Charles Aznavour, this incredible entertainer he put together one of the biggest and richest music programs.

The most well-known songs in the world's history are in his repertoire, so his audience is always engaged.

JCF has the ability to adapt in real-time his repertoire to the crowd and give to them delivery of the best entertainment possible, as his personal story is sure to hold the audience's attention from the opening seconds to the final chords of the concert.

The promoter can easily make adjustments to the JCF production, which makes it suitable for anything from a solo piano and voice to a full symphony. On the other hand, JCF acquired proper acting skills from his days in the Opera. He is also an incredible actor and starred in a short film, “The Mask of Love” which has been a recipient of over 13 film festival awards worldwide.

Confluence of all the arts

The singularity of the opera consists in its formal complexity and, therefore, in its immense potential complexity of meaning. Because the opera integrates the literature of the dramatic text (the libretto), the musical fabric built by the orchestra and the choir, the voices of the singers, the shapes, the colors, the shadows and the projections of the scenery, the costumes and the lighting, bodies and gestures of the characters, sometimes dance; and the technical and administrative coordination that guarantees the artistic result.

In short, opera poses, in its goal of becoming the most complex confluence of all the arts at the service of expression, a gigantic management challenge. Its organizational system is both complex and fragile. It requires the joint work of a wide range of professional skills in the artistic, administrative and technical domains, with their hierarchical systems, corporate traditions and often incompatible interests.

Maximizing quality, synonymous with prestige, and maximizing the audience, synonymous with the democratization of culture, are the strategies that support this public investment. In recent times, the audiovisual revolution has favored the dissemination to a mass audience of cultural products that have frequently been branded as elitist in their original theatrical form.

For this reason, today, an ambitious audiovisual policy can help legitimize the subsidies that a theater needs to exist. The audiovisual has become a guarantee of survival for the theaters that have had the intelligence to invest in the sector. Technology continues to pave way for newer possibilities and this might be another step towards the right direction.