Two excellent singers: tenor Piotr Beczała and soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, together with the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic conducted by the Italian conductor Gianluca Marcianò, will star at the Opera Gala. The programme includes works by Giacomo Puccini, Umberto Giordano, and Antonín Dvořák.
The first part of the concert will belong entirely to Giacomo Puccini. This artist worked in a trend known as verismo. Its goal was to imitate real life (verus means “true” in Latin), hence his focus on social issues and introducing modern, ordinary people to the stage. Manon Lescaut was first performed in Turin in 1893. The opera is based an18th-century novel by Antoine Prévost. The expressive orchestral Intermezzo and the aria Sola, perduta, abbandonata will follow, sung by Manon in the fourth act. Le Villi is a little-known, early and first stage composition by Puccini. The title refers to creatures appearing in folk tales, being the spirits of women who died of grief after the loss of unfaithful loved ones. They take revenge by kidnapping the unfaithful man in a deadly dance. The introduction to the second act – La Tregenda (ghost) – is the dance of the eponymous ghosts, spreading fire in the dark landscape of a winter night.
Tosca, performed in 1900, is one of Puccini’s most famous and eagerly performed operas. The axis of the plot is the relationship between the singer Floria Tosca and her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi. We will listen to four fragments of the opera: Cavaradossi’s aria Recondita armonia, in which he compares his partner with the portrait of Mary Magdalene he is currently creating, the duet of lovers Mario! Mario! Mario!… Son qui!, and finally two most famous arias: Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore, and E lucevan le stelle.
The second part of the concert will also begin with a piece by Puccini. It will be a gentle, meditative Intermezzo from the one-act opera Suor Angelica, first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918. Then we will listen to three fragments from Rusalka. Two come from the first act of this fairy-tale opera – Prince Vidino’s aria Divná přesladká, and the famous Song to the Moon – Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém, charming both with the beauty of the melody and the shimmering texture of the orchestra. There will also be a moving duet between from the third act.
The artists will also present works by Umberto Giordano, an Italian composer from the same generation as Puccini. The orchestra will perform his Intermezzo from Fedora, as well as three excerpts from Andrea Chénier. There will be two solo arias (one for tenor, the other for soprano) and a duet.