The Gran Teatre del Liceu is set to open its 2022-23 season with Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.”

Maestro Riccardo Frizza will lead the opera for 10 performances with two different casts and will mark his latest foray into Verdian repertory since the Festival Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra.”

In an official statement, Frizza said, “Taking a look back over this year, it has been very much ‘colored’ by Verdi. I’ve just been conducting the first 1857 version of ‘Simon Boccanegra’ at the Parma Festival Verdi and in December will take on ‘La Traviata’ at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, working in between, as I love and am obliged by festival schedules to do, on my beloved Donizetti. Now, I’m about to conduct ten performances of the opera ‘Il Trovatore’ at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. The Barcelona Opera is reviving this production by Àlex Ollé, which was created for the Opéra de Paris and inspired by the First World War, into which fraternal conflict dictated by hatred and revenge explodes, all the more agonizing.

“‘Il Trovatore’ is perhaps the most emblematic of Verdi’s artistic output from his most romantic period, that of the popular trilogy composed between 1851 and 1853. Verdi drew inspiration from ‘El trovador’ by García Gutiérrez, a drama caballeresco staged in Madrid in 1836. Spain is a favorite setting for opera composers. It was for Mozart, and later for Bizet. In between came Verdi and the power of operas such as Ernani, ‘La Forza del Destino,’ ‘Don Carlos’ and, of course, ‘Il Trovatore.'”

The opera will star Juan Jesús Rodríguez, Àngel Òdena, Saioa Hernández, Hibla Gerzmava, Ksenia Dudnikova, Judit Kutasi, Vittorio Grigolo, Yonghoon Lee, Gianluca Buratto, Krzysztof Baczyk, Maria Zapata, and Antoni Lliteres.

“Il Trovatore” is set to be performed between Oct. 27 and Nov. 8, 2022.