It will be a triumph of great Italian music the New Year's Concert at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice which will be broadcast live on Rai 1 tomorrow at 12.20. Because, as the superintendent of the Venetian theater Fortunato Ortombina wanted to underline, "The lyric song is all Italian and, even if there are some foreign authors on the program, however, great international music has an important cultural debt with Italy. It is a strong emotion for us, after so much silence and after last year's edition which took place behind closed doors, to hear the applause of a thousand people because the theater, with the utmost respect for all safety regulations, is back. in full capacity".
This nineteenth edition (the New Year's concert of the Phoenix was born from a rebirth, after the fire of the theater in 1996 and its reconstruction) will be directed by master Fabio Luisi, who will lead the orchestra, choir and two great soloists, the South African soprano Pretty Yende and the American tenor Brian Jagde. Both for the first time at the Fenice. Fabio Luisi has already conducted the New Year's Concert in 2017.
The symphony From the new world by Antonín Dvořák protagonist of the first part of the concert
As always, the program is rich and particularly impressive. Starting with the first part, exclusively orchestral, which will be dedicated to symphony number 9 in E minor op. 95 From the new world by Antonín Dvořák. "A symphony with a strongly representative value of the present moment - remembers the superintendent of the Phoenix - And with a broad perspective. The new world is not a world that has to arrive but it is the one we live day by day in this period". It is one of the best known and happiest pages of Dvořák's production and one of the most universally appreciated. It was first performed at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1893, the following year in Prague and in 1900 in Berlin with extraordinary success.
The second part of the concert will be dedicated to melodrama as usual, with a succession of arias and choral passages of the great Italian musical tradition and beyond. Music by Ponchielli, Offenbach, Gounod, Leoncavallo, Verdi, Rossini, Puccini and Wagner. A "debut" at the New Year's Concert for the German composer who lived and died in Venice. The Lohengrin (the prelude to the third act is scheduled) was Wagner's first opera performed in Italy. Closing and best wishes with three traditional songs of the New Year's Concert, among the best known and loved by the public: Go, thought, on the golden wings from Verdi's Nabucco, Father august from Puccini's Turandot. Final toast in music with Let us go to the happy chalices from there traviata by Verdi.
The live broadcast and the reruns of Rai dedicated to the New Year's concert
In a beautifully decorated theater it will be a great concert, great music, great audience. Not only the one present at the Fenice. The second part of the program, as usual, will in fact be broadcast live on Rai 1 tomorrow at 12.20. Enriched with dancing interludes shot in some particularly suggestive Venetian locations: the Cini Foundation on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the Biennale, Grassi Palace. This second part will then be re-proposed on Rai 5 at 18.15 pm. The concert will be broadcast in full on Rai Radio 3 tomorrow at 20pm and on Rai 5 on Thursday 24 February 2022 at 21.15pm.
The Teatro la Fenice this year, as already in 2020, despite the pandemic has closed its budget in balance. And, in the most difficult periods of closure, it reached 100 subscribers to its You Tube channel, an opportunity to listen to high quality music from home for free. An important contribution in the pandemic era, such as the one that saw the choir of the Venetian theater, less than a month ago, singing among others the Va'pensiero and the Mameli Hymn in the main vaccination center of Venice. Surprise, amazement, emotion of the many people queuing for the third dose of the vaccine, to which some choristers, musicians and the superintendent of the Venetian theater also underwent. While the choir sang, the words "Thanks, sanitary. The Phoenix".
(ph credit: page fb La Fenice Theater)
