Lied Matinee Joyce DiDonato
ANTONIO VIVALDI Arias of Ippolita from the opera Ercole sul Termodonte
GABRIEL FAURÉ Cinq Mélodies, Op. 58 "De Venise"
GIOACHINO ROSSINI Péchés de vieillesse, Vol. 1: Nos. 8-10. La regata veneziana
FRANZ SCHUBERT Gondelfahrer, D. 808
ROBERT SCHUMANN Two Venetian Songs from Myrthen, Op. 25
MICHAEL HEAD Three Songs of Venice
REYNALDO HAHN Venezia
Intermission approx. 11:40 a.m.
End of concert approx. 12:45 p.m.
Print programme (PDF)
Venice was the city in which in 1812 the 20-year-old Rossini first presented himself to the public as a composer – with the opera La cambiale di matrimonio. The following year he celebrated three further successful premieres with the operas Il Signor Bruschino, Tancredi and L’Italiana in Algeri. Reminiscences of the beloved city on the lagoon accompanied the composer into old age, when in his “sins of old age” he created La regata veneziana, a charming and amusing monument to the city. In Venetian dialect he set the traditional annual regatta to music from the view of a young girl who cheers for her beloved gondolier and can finally embrace him as the winner. In the song cycle Myrthen, which Robert Schumann dedicated to his beloved Clara, he has the famous gondoliers sing cheerful little songs, and even Schubert, who never visited La Serenissima (Venice), was inspired by his friend Johann Mayrhofer’s poem, Gondelfahrer, to compose a barcarole. The entire charm and audaciousness of Venetian taxi drivers are captured in Reynaldo Hahn’s cycle Venezia, and finally Gabriel Fauré dedicated his settings of poems by Verlaine, op. 58 to Venice. He did so because thanks to the composition fee he was able to take a holiday in this city, whose most famous local composer must of course be included on this musical journey – Antonio Vivaldi. His opera Ercole sul Termodonte has only recently been discovered and is about the journey of Hercules to the legendary river Thermodon in the realm of the queen of the Amazons.