It will be a toast to close the New Year's Concert who, despite such a difficult 2020, will spread his music from the Fenice of Venice to the rest of the world. "United and close in great music" is the message of the Venetian theater. And it will be really great music that will be broadcast live on Rai 1 today, at 12.20. The English maestro Daniel Harding conducts the Phoenix Orchestra, a regular at the theater of the lagoon city.
The protagonist, together with the musicians, the choir, the singers and the theater itself of a New Year's Eve still full of worries but also of expectations. First of all those of a prosperous and peaceful year as wished by the superintendent and artistic director of the Fenice, Fortunato Ortombina. "This year the warmth of the public will be lacking, but we have decided, confirming the concert and the Rai live broadcast, to welcome every single spectator to the theater as if it were the only one". Operation already experimented positively with concerts in streaming and that on the occasion of this New Year's Eve will have an even stronger meaning.
The great music of Beethoven and that of Verdi
Space for music. The New Year's Concert - as per tradition - will offer a program divided into two parts. A first exclusively orchestral dedicated this year to Symphony number 4 by Ludwig van Beethoven of which in 2020 the 250th anniversary of birth was celebrated. “The most canceled musician in the history of music,” commented the superintendent orthombine referring to the past year and to the many appointments dedicated to the great German composer that have been canceled. A tribute therefore to Beethoven.
The second part of the program will be dedicated, as usual, to melodrama. The performers of arias and duets are soprano Rosa Feola (for the second time at this appointment) and tenor Xabier Anduaga, making his debut at the New Year's Concert. The choral steps are entrusted to the Choir of the Fenice directed by Maestro Claudio Marino Moretti. We will listen the overture from the Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, passages from Trovatore and Rigoletto by Verdi, from Roméo et Juliette of Gunod. From Les Contes d'Hoffmann by Offenbach, from La Fille du régiment of Donizetti, from the Cavalleria Rusticana of Mascagni. To close, again Verdi with La traviata, the Va Pensiero from Nabucco and, as a tradition, "Libiam ne 'lieti calici" from Traviata.
During the New Year's Concert, a journey through images inside the Theater
Today's appointment on Rai 1 will allow not only to listen to high-level music but will also be an opportunity to admire extraordinary views of the interior of the La theater Fenice and its surroundings. Absent the ballet, it was decided to tell through images - during the Concert - the unique Venice of this moment. There live broadcast on Rai 1 will be dedicated to the second part of the New Year's Concert. It will also be repeated today at 18.15 pm on Rai 5. At 20.30 pm on Rai Radio 3 and Thursday 11 February at 20.30 pm on Rai 5.
In addition to music, the spectacle of the Phoenix "reinvented" for the public to continue playing in compliance with current rules. The Orchestra will be in the stalls, the choir and the singers will be partly on the stage and partly on the boxes. In the background you can see the keel of that ship under construction designed last spring to be able to comply with the rules on spacing. A scenography of great visual impact, if you think that the stage of the Fenice is among the most extensive interior spaces in Venice, second only to the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Doge's Palace. This ship under construction, an idea that was born inside the theater, wants to symbolize an ark that leads to a new world, made of that normality that the Coronavirus suddenly upset almost a year ago. And that La Fenice wishes everyone to find again with the arrival of the new year.
(Photo Michela Crosera)
