Royal Opera House Muscat

Peter Pan The Musical

Music and Lyrics by Edoardo Bennato

Stage Director Maurizio Colombi

Written by Maurizio Colombi, Fabrizio Carboni, Gianmario Longoni

Cast: Giorgio Camandona, Pietro Pignatelli, Martha Rossi, Giuseppe Brancato, Daniele Simula, Ilaria Fioravanti, Angelina Roz, Jacopo Pelliccia, Samantha Bellaria, Viola Zanotti, Valeria Ianni, Carlotta Sibilla, Massimo Finocchiaro, Alfonso Capalbo, Luca Laconi, Marco Di Palma, Pierluigi Lima, Tiziano Russo, Maria Sacchi, Christian Maesani

Click Here for Italian Version

The building of Royal Opera House in Muscat was a brilliant idea of the charismatic Sultan of Oman Sayyid Qaboos bin Said Al Said, a fan of opera and beautiful music.

The theatre was finished in 2011 and inaugurated by Turandot under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli.

From Italy is Umberto Fanni, the Director of Royal Opera House since 2015.

The structure, located near the Qurum beach, is great, with an architectural language belonging to the Omani tradition. The pure white marble under the bright sun of Muscat reflects and glitters like an oasis, like an imaginative vision in the desert.

It is a single huge building consisting of a clean spacious commercial centre with large common area and shops, bars, restaurants and the theatre. Spectators enter after crossing a big patio under the sun or a long shaded porch.

Passed the ticket office in the large foyer there are the costumes of the characters of opera already presented. The ceiling is of refined red and wood-coloured. From the foyer, there are stairs with elegant red carpets. White also dominates the corridors, in which paintings of the Omani tradition are exhibited.

The theatre is large, about one thousand one hundred people, on four levels all with a clear view. The immaculate clean white of the structure and the foyer disappear inside. Here the red of the chairs, the curtain or the colour of the classic wood with which it was built prevails, with a style similar to Italian theatres and with incredibly limpid acoustics up to the last level.

Among the many operas presented at the Royal Opera House, on May 3 4, 5, 2018 the Italian production of Peter Pan The Musical was performed with music by singer-songwriter Edoardo Bennato.

The basis is obviously the book by J.M. Barrie, rewritten and adapted by Maurizio Colombi, also the director, with Fabrizio Carboni and Gianmarco Longoni. The text combines themes for young people and for adults.

The actors are all Italians, they sang and acted in English except a small initial scene in Italian.

The story is classic, but the quickly unleashed verve allows an irony and a fun with characters characterized by over-the-top tones. The acting must be brilliant and without pauses to support rhythmic music.

We start from a dream, from an undeniable desire for children's adventure. Certainly then the desire, the nostalgia of returning home prevails. The mother and the false ill-tempered father are in their heart. The adventures of the boys are beautiful but then need to grow up, needs to return home, and they have to leave Peter Pan in his eternal youth. It is not abandonment, they leave the hero to be available for the fantasies and imaginations of other children impatient to dream.

The key to the musical is above all the music and lyrics of Edoardo Bennato's songs. The rhythmic tone was great excitement for the Omani and foreign residents boys, confirming that they performed international music valid for the whole world. The demonstration is the rhythmic beat of hands on the final music and the ovations to the actors.