In response to @monotonous-minutia‘s ‘cast an obscure opera’ game, here we go, with the first of what will probably be many (note: despite the lack of restrictions on time period, I’m just doing current singers):
Stiffelio:
Stiffelio: Michael Fabiano
Lina: Sonya Yoncheva
Stankar: Michael Volle
Raffaele: Ben Bliss
Jorg: Ferruccio Furlanetto
*I don’t care who plays Federico and Dorotea because both their roles are pretty small; just as long as you get a tenor and mezzo who can sing well, act convincingly, and hold their own in ensembles, I’ll be okay.
This opera is very severely underrated; it was heavily censored upon its 1850 premiere because it was seen as extremely offensive to good morals and Catholicism by Austrian authorities. (I mean...it’s not really.) Verdi ended up turning this into the (IMO, as someone who’s seen both, much worse) 1857 opera Aroldo, and Stiffelio was presumed lost for over a century, until it was rediscovered in the late 1960s. Since then, it’s had a modest comeback (especially in the 90s when both Carreras and Domingo headlined major new productions at the ROH and the Met respectively) that ought to be much bigger.