8-22 Aug 2003. This year the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro wont be presenting revivals of lost scores but rather work from previous festivals, so the novelty will be in the staging rather than in the music. The programme opens with Semiramide (8-20 Aug), the last opera written by Rossini for the Italian stage and a work so perfectly proportioned and aesthetically pleasing it has become the ideal of Italian belcanto opera. The parts of the two female protagonists (Semiramide and Asace) will be played by Darina Takova and Daniela Barcellona, who are already known at Pesaro and who performed in a beautiful Tancredi a few years ago. The two male parts will be sung by Ildar Abdrazakov and Gregory Kunde. The conductor is Carlo Rizzi, and the director is Dieter Kaegi, who mainly works outside Italy and who is in Pesaro for the first time. Lluis Pasqual, who directed the international drama festival at the Venice biennale in 1995, also makes his debut at Pesaro, with Le Comte Ory (10-22 Aug). The last comic opera written by Rossini, much of its music comes from another of his works: Il viaggio a Reims. The cast includes Stefania Bonfadelli and Juan Diego Florez, a specialist in Rossini who began his career at Pesaro in 1996. The programme ends with Adina (9-21 Aug) in a production which was first staged in 1999 but which has been revised and modified by its creator, director Moni Ovadia. On 21 Aug there will be a performance of Stabat Mater, Rossinis religious masterpiece, conducted by the great Rossini scholar Alberto Zedda (Paolo Di Nicola).