In the summer of 1913, to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi, the tenor Giovanni Zenatello and the theatre impresario Ottone Rovato took on the financial risk of promoting a magnificent lyrical festival. With the staging of Aida, the Arena di Verona became the biggest open-air lyrical theatre in the world, a supremacy that it still holds today.
From the most passionate lovers of lyrical music to the tourist who descends upon the opera out of curiosity: the Arena creates the meeting point for these two extremities, as it is capable of combining the quality of the music and of the vocal interpretation with the magnificence of the scenography and the magic historical context of the monument.