The International Music Festival of Timișoara is set to open its 50th edition with a production of Verdi’s “Aida.”

The festival, which runs from April 26 to May 31, 2026, will showcase the famed Verdi opera with a star cast led by tenor Luciano Ganci as Radamès, soprano Ilaria Alida Quilico as Aida and mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili in her signature role as Amneris.

The performance will be conducted by David Crescenzi and directed by Ognian Draganoff, with set design by Boris Stoynov and costumes by Tzvetanka Petkova Stoynova.

In a statement, Ganci said, “In the life of an opera singer, always travelling around the world, performing can involve not only contributing to a specific staging but accomplishing something truly significant in the history of the host organization. That’s what happened years ago, the first time I went to Romania, when I was Cavaradossi in a production of Tosca created as a tribute to the great Virginia Zeani. It’s the same with my upcoming ‘Aida,’ a single performance on 26th April at the Romanian National Opera, Timișoara, to inaugurate the 50th edition of the Timisoara International Music Festival. I will be singing for the first time in one of the finest opera houses in our sister country Romania, as Radamès in this festival which came into being on 27th April 1946 with an Aida that has entered Romanian musical and social history. It is an honour to appear as this warrior, so well-loved, so complicated, musically so well-defined by Verdi, in a context where opera, history and modernity are perpetually intertwined.”

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