On Friday, March 7th 2025 at 8 pm, Michele Spotti on the podium of the Mehta Hall, leading the Maggio Orchestra after the double symphonic concert held last December.

On the programme are Franz Schubert’s Symphony 4 "Tragic" and Hector Berlioz’s "Symphonie Fantastique".

The concert will be broadcast on Rai Radio 3 

Florence, March 1st 2025 - After his acclaimed debut in the double concert staged just over two months ago, Michele Spotti returns to the podium of the Sala Zubin Mehta, at the head of the Maggio Orchestra , for a new symphonic appointment. In the poster, on Friday ,March 7th at 8 pm, an interesting program with strong romantic tones; opening the concert the Symphony n. 4 in C minor D. 417, called "Tragica" by Franz Schubert. Completed at the end of April 1816, the nickname Tragica was attributed to her, a posteriori, by the same author. This is his only youth symphony in minor key, where the very choice of the 'C minor' has made us think about the desire to confront with Beethoven’s tensions.

Following, closing the show, the Symphonie Fantastique op. 14 by Hector Berlioz. Written in the early months of 1830 and performed in Paris on December 5th of the same year - as well as extensively retouched in subsequent years - the composer described it as "a great instrumental composition of a new genre, with which I will try to strongly impress the listeners". It winds in five movements connected to each other by a fixed idea (idée fixe), that is a musical thought associated with the woman loved.

Michele Spotti will also conduct the new production of Norma, staged in the Teather's Main Hall from March 9th to March 16th 2025.

Maestro Spotti studied violin and composition at the "Verdi Conservatory" in Milan, graduating under the guidance of Daniele Agiman. He then studied at the "Haute École de musique" in Geneva and recently made his debut at the Paris Opera with Turandot, at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples with Simon Boccanegra, at the Arena di Verona again with Puccini’s Turandot  (which inaugurated the 101st edition of the Festival), at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma with Die Zauberflöte, at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin with Il viaggio a Reims and at the Wiener Staatsoper with La fille du régiment.

The concert:

Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 4 in C minor, D417, “Tragic”

Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, Franz Schubert composed six symphonies; These works are certainly valuable but designed not so much for public performance as rather as apprenticeship exercises in the wake of that classical tradition that had found fertile ground in Vienna to produce its best fruits. In addition, Schubert’s formative years coincide with those of the success of Beethoven, whom the youngest colleague looks at with enormous respect and veneration. The Symphony n. 4 in C minor, composed in 1816, is the one that shows the most obvious influence of the

Beethovenian model both for the key of C minor, the same as the Coriolano and the famous Fifth Symphony, and for that subtitle, 'Tragica', affixed by Schubert himself in an attempt to bring his work closer to the atmosphere of the illustrious maestro. However, This symphony with a bright and affirmative character has very little tragic and every attempt to amplify and search for dramatic contrasts is tempered by the predominance of lyricism and the elegiac Schubertian vein.

Hector Berlioz
Symphonie Fantastique op. 14

Composed in 1830, Symphonie fantastique, episodes of the life of an artist in five parts, op. 14 is the work that brings the 27-year-old Berlioz to international attention. The inspiration comes from an autobiographical fact: the initially unrequited love for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson who, years later, will become the composer’s wife.

With the romantic exaltation typical of his production, Berlioz pours out on a pentagram the torments of the heart giving life to the first example of programme music. The symphony is in fact divided into five movements accompanied by captions that describe the phases of the burning infatuation of the artist: sensations, memories, delirious dreams and hallucinations that translate into musical images, as the beloved woman is sublimated in music thanks to a melody, the famous idée fixe, which occurs cyclically giving unity to the various parts of the composition. But if the structure of the Symphonie fantastique is innovative only in appearance - the movements with descriptive titles actually follow the rules of classical symphonism, and the division into five parts has an illustrious precedent in Beethoven’s Pastoral - The real novelty lies instead in the value given to the stamp. Berlioz creates a new palette of instrumental colors with unique combinations that vivify the nineteenth-century orchestral language from within.