"Bravo to conductor Carlo Goldstein for conducting this excellent orchestra with elegance, free from any exaggeration, and with an attention to detail that did justice to this sophisticated score."
Musica - Nicola Cattò
Puccini departed for Brussels on his final journey, bringing with him a few sheets of notes on which he hoped to be able to work. He feared, and perhaps in part already knew, that he would not be able to complete that score which, in the previous three years, had grown in his hands until it assumed grandiose proportions. Those few sheets, subsequently scoured by generations of scholars, contained drafts, ideas, and above all the hope that his most ambitious creation – Turandot – would not remain forever unfinished due to those two horrifying words that doctors have long hesitated to pronounce: laryngeal carcinoma.
A Reflection on Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo
One hot Calabrian summer in the 1860s, the young son of a magistrate witnessed a horrific, bloody scene: poor strolling players, consumed with jealousy, committed murder during a performance in the public square. This obscene act, a glimpse of a horrible truth, crept into the imagination of that good little boy from southern Italy. A truth that stank of sweat, streets, and foul feelings; a truth that did not tolerate masks, and went far beyond the stage.
A Homage to the Theatre
At the beginning of the 20th century, Opera was ready for something new: no more queens and bishops, no more nobles engaged in grand enterprises or relentlessly seeking revenge, no more historical figures delivering moral messages. The bourgeois audience wanted to empathize more directly, to be entertained by something other than metaphors, and passionately desired unique new stories. And so, the Far East arrived on the scene, as well as fantasy literature, the southern folklore of Verismo, the American western frontier, and even talking animals or toys that came to life. Opera was experiencing one of its greatest creative moments, just as many were discussing its inevitable decline. Its form became increasingly freer and more unpredictable, its orchestration more and more original, while vocal parts explored new techniques from Sprechgesang to aleatory writing. All of this was undertaken with the aim of giving voice to characters with a new psychological complexity and modern feel.
“Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself,
or, more accurately, liberating oneself, or, more accurately: being”.
Franz Kafka
Many dreams were shattered in that January of 1779. Who knows what Mozart’s state of mind was that winter when, after spending a year and a half seeking new opportunities in Paris and Mannheim, he was forced to resign himself to resuming his duties as organist for the detested Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg. Mozart was then a young man of 23 who abhorred more than anything else that dull routine with its 450-florin annual salary: what a disappointment it was for him to return home in that way!
THE OVERTURE OF COSÌ FAN TUTTE
“Così fan tutte is judged by some as the Mozart opera where Reason dominates.
Here is the hidden secret of this score’s immortal youth, which should attract,
and likely will do so in the future, the preferences of free spirits, those who see
in the music – as Nietzsche did – a cathartic art capable of playing
with the forces of the Universe.”
Eugenio Montale
Among the overtures of the major Mozart operas, it is only the Così fan tutte overture that is not played as a symphonic piece. From the very first it is clear that this overture has neither the symphonic importance of its counterpart in The Magic Flute nor the irresistible originality of the Don Giovanni overture.
The piazza comes to life: here there are soldiers, women and children; a young woman is looking for one of the soldiers, and at the end of their shift the cigarette girls come out to show off their beauty. There is misery here, but with harmony at its core, as everyone has a defined role; everything progresses as it should, and everyone knows exactly who they are.But then SHE appears: Carmen has arrived on the scene!