The Italian Cultural Institute in London is proud to feature a series of five musical episodes, to show the multifaceted complexity of the Italian operatic scene in the period comprising the last decades of the nineteenth century and the initial ones of the twentieth.
The first four events are focused on the most prominent representatives of the Giovane Scuola (Young School), to allow a deeper understanding of how these composers variously attempted to renew the narrative and musical language of Italian Romantic melodrama, without rejecting its sound basic pattern, which alternates theatrical dynamism and static lyricism.
The last event is aimed at giving an insight on a personality who brought this pattern into question consciously and radically not only by carrying out a rigorous meditation about the aesthetics and social role of theatre in the Classical Antiquity, but also by writing and composing his innovative operatic dramas in accordance with such a meditation.
THE PROGRAMME OF THE SERIES
27 October 2017
Giacomo Puccini: La Rondine & Madama Butterfly
20 November 2017
Umberto Giordano: Andrea Chénier
20 December 2017
Pietro Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana
Ruggero Leoncavallo: Zazà
22 January 2018
Giacomo Puccini: Tosca
12 February 2018
Ildebrando Pizzetti: Assassinio nella Cattedrale
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Every Episode consists of two moments.
15:00-18:00
Masterclass. A three-hour learning opportunity tailored especially for a public of music students and opera enthusiasts.
19:00
Concert. An event open to a general public eager to appreciate exquisite excerpts from some outstanding Italian operatic masterpieces.
Please, note!
Between the Masterclass and the Concert, there is a break (18:00-19:00), during which you can either stay at the Italian Cultural Institute and enjoy the other ongoing activities or leave the Institute and come back in time for the Concert from 18:40.
You must book for the whole individual Episode (i.e. Masterclass & Concert); but, if you are interested only in the Concert, you can arrive at the Institute from 18:40.
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FIRST EPISODE
GIACOMO PUCCINI: LA RONDINE & MADAMA BUTTERFLY
A cycle concerning the Giovane Scuola, could only have opened with an event on its brightest star.
In this episode, one of the Tuscan Maestro’s undisputed masterpieces is explored once again and compared with a sophisticated work of his maturity, to examine the elements of continuity and discontinuity in Puccini’s indefatigable and scrupulous quest for an ever new balance between innovation and tradition, between audacity and conformity, between the unrestful imagination of a rebel artist and the lazy taste of his bourgeois public.
By presenting "La rondine" to a British audience, the Italian Cultural Institute intends also to celebrate the centenary of its premiere (Monte Carlo, 1917).
Programme & Performers
The episode will feature select pieces from "La rondine" and "Madama Butterfly".
Rita Siley, soprano
Alessandro Zuppardo, piano
For more information please click here
Book here
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