Puccini racconta Puccini
On the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death, on Friday, November 29th 2024, the Teatro del Maggio pays homage to the great composer with a concert entirely dedicated to his music.
On the podium of the Main Hall, at the helm of the Orchestra and the Maggio Choir, Francesco Lanzillotta.
The dramaturgy is curated by Alberto Mattioli; the baritone Alfonso Antoniozzi plays Giacomo Puccini.
Florence, November 26th, 2024 - On Friday, November 29th 2024 at 8 p.m., the Teatro del Maggio celebrates a special evening to Giacomo Puccini entirely dedicated to his compositions on the day that marks the 100th anniversary of his death, which took place in Brussels on November 29th, 1924.
On the podium of the Main Hall, leading the Orchestra and the Maggio Choir, the maestro Francesco Lanzillotta, who will then return to the Theatre in the turn of a few weeks for the diptych Mavra/ Gianni Schicchi in the program - always in the Great Hall - from 15 to 22 December.
The dramaturgy of the show is curated by the musicologist and writer Alberto Mattioli; the baritone Alfonso Antoniozzi plays Giacomo Puccini himself.
The maestro of the Maggio Choir is Lorenzo Fratini.
In the poster a program entirely dedicated to the music of Puccini that includes both some extracts from his most famous works and some symphonic pages of rare performance: the concert starts with Crisantemi, a youthful piece that, as told by the composer himself in a letter of February 1890 to his younger brother Michele, Puccini wrote "in one night, for the death of Amedeo d'Aosta", which occurred on the previous January 18th.
The concert continues with the Prelude in E minor: it was completed in August 1876, in Lucca; 'rediscovered' from the seventies of the twentieth century, the Prelude has quickly entered the symphonic repertoires, conducted by prestigious masters.
The following Symphonic Prelude in A major was composed in the summer of 1882 as an essay at the Milan Conservatory and - also at the Conservatory - was first performed on July 15th of that year.
The concert continues with the Symphonic Capriccio, which was first performed by the Milan Conservatory Orchestra on July 1883: not only it had a great success of public and critics, but "revealed" Puccini to intellectual Milan, cultured and scapigliata. The great success of Capriccio was one of the reasons why a private performance of the Willis was organized, which in a short time will become Le Villi, opera-dance in two acts on libretto by Ferdinando Fontana, composed in the second half of 1883 and first performed on 31 May 1884 at the "Teatro dal Verme" in Milan, from which is taken the extract that follows in the poster, namely Tregenda. The successful outcome of Le Villi led the publisher Giulio Ricordi to commission a second work from Puccini: the choice fell on Edgar, libretto by the poet Ferdinando Fontana and freely inspired by the drama in verse by Alfred de Musset "La coupe et les lèvres": the composition lasted four years and the new work was born in April 1889 at La Scala, Milan.
The Prelude of the third act is extracted by Edgar, which precedes in the poster two of the most famous extracts from as many of the most famous pieces of the Puccini catalogue: first the Intermezzo of the third act of Manon Lescaut, inspired by the novel by the abbot Antoine François Prévost "Histoire du chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut" and composed between the summer of 1889 and October 1892; then the famous Coro a bocca chiusa, taken from the 2nd act of Madama Butterfly.
The Intermezzo by Suor Angelica, the second work of the Puccini Triptych, precedes the concluding piece of the concert, namely the Hymn to Rome: it was composed by Puccini but only in the version for song and piano among a thousand doubts and toil; The composer himself confessed to his friend Guido Vandini: "I’m going crazy writing the Hymn in Rome!". Despite this, the first performance took place at the National stadium in Rome in June 1919, in the presence of Umberto, Prince of Piedmont, and his sisters Jolanda and Mafalda, where he achieved a great success.
The concert:
To tell the story of Puccini it is perhaps better to leave the word to him and his contemporaries, creating an imaginary dramaturgy but based on facts and "real" words where, really, Puccini tells Puccini. Yes, but which Puccini? His private and especially sentimental life is explored with a passion that goes from academic uncritical scholars to the candid gossiping of those who are always looking for new loves of tender Giacomo. Indispensable, of course, because man and artist are inseparable. And yet for this occasion inevitably celebratory but, hopefully, not rhetorical, it has been attempted instead the way of an artistic portrait that, as is obvious, is not and never will be complete, because the greatness of Puccini’s art will always be greater than our ability to tell it (and sometimes, as we will see, even to understand it). But at least we tried to reconstruct the creative parable of a composer, in the end, always so restless and so dissatisfied with himself, starting from the first attempts and stopping at the threshold of the unfinished (but unfinished, in fact, because its dramaturgical rebus was really insoluble) Turandot terminal. Avoiding the hagiography, and indeed also giving account of doubts, second thoughts, criticisms, ungenerous judgments others but also own; and trying to highlight, perhaps, even some less known aspect, as the youthful but fierce Wagnerism of Puccini.
(from the text by Alberto Mattioli, published in the room booklet)