2010 is about to end, and Rimini proposes, as every year, to start the New Year with an opera: 2011 will start with Bizet’s Carmen, on the 1st January at 5.30 pm and on the 3rd January at 8.30 pm at the Auditorium Palacongressi.

The first step is to choose a place to stay: a hotel in Rimini, a 3 star hotel, a hotel with swimming pool, a place where you’ll be able to finish your 2010 and enter in 2011 in the best possible way; then you can taste the good Romagna’s cuisine, choosing among the numerous eating houses to try the traditional recipes of the area.

If you choose to spend a romantic New Year’s Eve, you will find many restaurants where you’ll be able to book a table for a dinner for two: a restaurant with garden, maybe, to make the atmosphere even more suggestive.

Once the New Year started, Rimini proposes to begin the first day of 2011 with one of the most renowned and beloved operas: Bizet’s Carmen. It’s the masterpiece of the French composer; its première was on the 3rd March 1875 at the Paris Opéra Comique.

The famous story of Carmen, set in Seville, has been chosen to start 2011: its arias, like the renowned Habanera, will give a start to the New Year with the energy transmitted by Bizet’s opera, among its singing voices and the ballets with a Spanish taste.

The tickets can be bought starting from the 2nd December 2010, and prices go from 25 to 50 euros; you can buy them in the historical centre of Rimini, in Piazza Cavour, 31, at the URP office, everyday Sunday included from 9 am to 12.30 and from 4 pm to 7.30 pm, but on Thursday from 5.30 pm to 8 pm. To get the tickets if you live out of the province you can stop them for a day and pay with a bank transfer to Atto Primo Associazione Rimini inMusica.

The plot is set in a place where desperation, poverty and betrayal rule, and Carmen is a beautiful gypsy, lively and passionate, who lives following instinct and feelings, challenging rules and fate. The scene is set in Andalusia, in Seville, a land normally associated to liveliness and colour, which actually do not lack, but here they are veiled by a social disease which brings a feeling of sadness: the joy you see here and there in Carmen is the joy you live in the slums, where you can do nothing but trying to cover desperation faking a smile, hoping to get some relief.

In this opera we can find important issues, which, sadly, can be considered living matters also nowadays: there are still places in which criminality rules, where desperation is the most common feeling and is masked with a sad happiness. But besides this there’s the hope to change and to improve, to let people know others realities and to go on, creating neighbourhoods, cities, countries in which laughs are real and are not intended to hide tears.

The biggest wish we can make in this specific historical moment is to smile again, after having chased away those who impede it: many wishes for a 2011 full of joy, true smiles, pride and dignity!