Special events
From Vanessa to MIKA: the TCBO Orchestra takes centre stage in Spoleto
From Vanessa to MIKA: the TCBO Orchestra takes centre stage in Spoleto
Two very different events put the Orchestra of Teatro Comunale di Bologna at the centre of the 69th Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. On one side Vanessa by Samuel Barber, which opens the Festival at the Teatro Nuovo on Friday 26 June at 6.30pm, with a second performance on Sunday 28 June at 3pm; on the other MIKA Symphonique, the concert in which the London pop star brings contemporary writing and the symphonic tradition together, on Tuesday 30 June at 9.30pm in Piazza Duomo.
An opera in three acts to a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, Vanessa won Barber the Pulitzer Prize after its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1958. It now returns to Spoleto, where it arrived in 1961 in Italian translation for its national premiere, in a new staging co-produced by the Festival dei Due Mondi, Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Bologna and Fondazione Teatro Petruzzelli. On the podium, making her Italian debut with the Bolognese orchestra, is the young South Korean conductor Sora Elisabeth Lee. The production, sung in the original English, is directed by Leo Muscato. Alongside the Chorus of Teatro Lirico Sperimentale di Spoleto sings an international cast: Lauren Fagan (Vanessa), Kayleigh Decker (Erika), Lulama Taifasi (Anatol), Helene Schneiderman (the Baroness) and Rod Gilfry (the old doctor).
Leading the TCBO Orchestra in MIKA Symphonique is the Canadian composer and conductor Simon Leclerc. The concert traces MIKA’s bond with classical music from childhood on: studying singing and the piano, singing in the chorus at the Royal Opera House in London in Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, then the Royal College of Music, joined in his teenage years by rock and electronica. His best-loved songs, from Love Today to Happy Ending and Grace Kelly, are heard in Spoleto in symphonic dress in Leclerc’s own arrangements, performed by the Comunale’s Orchestra and the Chorus of Teatro Lirico Sperimentale.
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