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The online service debuted on Tuesday with Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi opera' "The Sicilian Vespers", conducted by director Fabio Lusi.

Ask him to name roles he’s currently studying and he rattles off a dizzying list: Mephistopheles in Gounod’s “Faust,” Figaro in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” Procida in Verdi’s “The Sicilian Vespers,” Orest in Strauss’s “Elektra.” and some Wagner: Kurwenal in “Tristan und Isolde” and Gunther in “Götterdämmerung.”

On his return to Britain, Runciman split his time between London and the Hebrides, and wrote the books that were to make his name: the ground-breaking three-volume “History of the Crusades”; and a succession of works on Byzantine history that drew on a wide variety of sources, Muslim and Greek, most notably “The Sicilian Vespers” and “The Fall of Constantinople”.

In a country where all of history is reduced to a few notable events, a candidate who draws analogies about military mistakes to the Crimean war or compares a dangerous local uprising to the Sicilian Vespers is more likely to be met with puzzlement than cheers.

When, as the result of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the Island of Sicily passed into the hands of Pedro III. of Aragon, it was placed in the bitterest antagonism towards the Holy See, and no active persecution is to be looked for.