Giuseppina strepponi biography of abraham
Verdi La traviata
Massimo Zanetti
Conductor
Massimo Zanetti was Music Director of the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra (South Corea) from until the end of Under his leading it has become one of the most important symphony orchestras in Asia. Among his many concerts, the Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann and Respighi cycles were particularly acclaimed by the critics and audience. His international career has already taken him to the most renowned opera houses and concert halls in the world. In , he will continue his twenty years collaboration with the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, conducting Don Carlo and La bohème. Invitations in recent seasons have taken him to the Monte Carlo Opera (I due Foscari), the Sydney Opera House, La Scala in Milan and the Seoul Metropolitan Opera among many others. In the symphonic field, he has worked with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Komische Oper in Berlin, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and the Russian National Orchestra, among many others. Massimo Zanetti was music director at the Flemish Opera from to During this time, he not only performed a large number of highly acclaimed productions of a wide range of titles including Salome, Der fliegende Holländer and Pelléas etMélisande but also many symphony concerts presenting some of the most important works of the symphonic repertoire. Zanetti’s successful work is also documented by an extensive discography.
Jean-Louis Grinda
Director
Born in Monaco in , Jean-Louis Grinda began his career in as artistic secretary at the Avignon Opera and Chorégies d’Orange. From to he was director of the Grand Théâtre de Reims. In he was appointed general manager and artistic director of the Opéra royal de Wallonie (Liège), a position he held until During his tenure he initiated an eclectic programme, made his debuts as stage designer w I wrote about Giuseppe Verdi&#;s monumental Requiem for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra back in November, and it seems that I never posted my notes for this stunning performance. Either that or the WordPress searchbots are lying to me, and I&#;m experiencing short-term memory loss, both possibilities I would prefer not to contemplate. At any rate, here are the notes I wrote, which can also be found on the DSO website, if you click around and expand some menus and so forth. Or you could just read them here. by René Spencer Saller Giuseppe Verdi (–): Messa da Requiem I asked a friend, Patty Kofron, a versatile mezzo-soprano who has sung Giuseppe Verdi&#;s Requiem several times, to describe the experience from the performer&#;s perspective. &#;I don&#;t know if I can express how much more it is than the complexity of the double choruses, or the beauty and terror of the music,&#; she said. &#;When I sing the &#;Libera me,&#; I feel like I am personally begging God to spare me from eternal damnation&#; and I&#;m not even religious. It&#;s the most powerful thing I&#;ve ever sung or will ever sing. As much as I love the Brahms, Fauré, Mozart, and other requiems, the Verdi puts my own mortality and my maker right in my face.&#; You don&#;t need to be singing to feel a similar rush. You don&#;t even need to believe in God. Despite its obvious Judeo-Christian framework, its churchy fugues, and its incense-steeped Latin trappings, this Requiem deals more with the secular than the sacred. For long, delectable stretches, if you tune out the Latin text and simply let the melodies wash over you unmediated, you might convince yourself that you&#;re listening to a love duet or an arietta, perhaps a quartet backed by large chorus or some showstopper from one of his recent operas. Indeed, Verdi finished Aida, a commission to honor the Suez Canal, in , a few years before the first performance of the Requiem; the two scores share a simil Verdi was at the height of his powers as an operatic composer when, in , he wrote this Requiem. It began as part of a project calling on Italian composers to collaborate on a Requiem for Rossini. The project fell through, but Verdi resumed writing his own Requiem in response to the death of one of his personal heroes, the writer Alessandro Manzoni (). This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions. Antoinette Halloran (soprano), Deborah Humble (mezzo), Diego Torre (tenor), James Clayton (bass), Orpheus Choir, Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei Verdi’s relationship with the church was complex. Coming from a fairly poor family, the church was the means to Verdi’s education and early career in music. But it also tied him, at least temporarily, to life as a village church musician, embroiled in its politics, when he longed to devote himself to the theatre. “Stay away from priests,” he would say afterwards. Verdi’s long-time companion, the singer Giuseppina Strepponi, said Verdi was, if not an atheist, then certainly not much of a believer. “I go on talking to him about the wonders of the heavens, the earth, the sea, etc. He laughs in my face and freezes me in the midst of my burst of utterly divine enthusiasm, and says ‘you are mad!’” Verdi’s response to the death of a friend seems much closer to nihilism than piety: “I think that life is the stupidest thing and – worse still – useless. What do we do? What have we done? What will we do? When you get right down to it, the answer is humiliating and very, very sad: Nothing.” Title page of first edition of Verdi Requiem Photo: Ricordi, Public Domain His Requiem is a humanist requiem. It follows the grief, the doubt, and the soul-searching of someone confronting mortality. It begins and ends with a plea for “requiem aeternam” or eternal rest, but there is no certainty or solace as its very last words fade into silence, “Deliver me, Lord, from eternal death”. Verdi unleashes an i .
Verdi&#;s Requiem