WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Ouverture da Le nozze di Figaro K 492
Ouverture da Don Giovanni K 527
Ouverture da Così fan tutte K 588
NICCOLÒ PAGANINI
Concerto n. 1 in D major op. 6
Violin
Giuseppe Gibboni
(56th Paganini Prize winner)
Conductor
Donato Renzetti
Opera Carlo Felice Genova Orchestra
A Bridge of Music is an international cultural project conceived by Opera Carlo Felice Genova’s Superintendent Claudio Orazi in 2016, with the aim of enhancing music as a driver of cultural diplomacy between Italy and the United States. 2025 will mark the bicentenary of the performance of the first Italian opera in the United States (Il barbiere di Siviglia, November 1825). In view of the celebrations for such a significant date, with the scientific curatorship of Francesco Zimei and Giuseppe Gerbino, and after the success of the dedicated programme in 2023, the Opera Carlo Felice proposes a 2024 tour that opened in Genoa on 25 September with a concert conducted by Davide Massiglia with music by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ottorino Respighi and Felix Mendelssohn, to continue across an ideal bridge to New York, where Donato Renzetti – director emeritus of the Theatre -, the Opera Carlo Felice Orchestra and the violinist Giuseppe Gibboni are the protagonists of the concert dedicated to Lorenzo Da Ponte and Niccolò Paganini.
The musical programme opens with the three overtures from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s famous ‘Italian Trilogy’, consisting of Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790), to librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte. The trilogy belongs to the composer’s full maturity, and represents a very high moment in the history of opera buffa, both musically and in terms of librettism/literature and dramaturgy. The overtures bring together both Mozart’s theatrical and symphonic genius, proven by his intense activity in the composition of symphonies – of which he composed some of his most famous and accomplished in those same years. One of the most fascinating aspects of the three works is the incredible synergy between Mozart and Da Ponte, who reached unprecedented heights of expression in this union. Da Ponte would later become connected to American culture, moving to New York in 1805 and beginning an intense activity both as an artist and as an impresario and promoter of Italian opera in the States – not only did his work inspire the staging of the first Italian opera season in New York, which opened with Il barbiere di Siviglia in 1825, but he also composed the pastiche L’Ape musicale, which saw its first performance at the Park Theatre in 1830. Da Ponte contributed greatly to establishing the deep artistic and cultural bond between Italy and the United States that would grow ever stronger in the centuries to come.
Closing is Niccolò Paganini’s Concerto No. 1 in D major, composed between 1815 and 1816 and first performed at the Teatro Sant’Agostino in Genoa. The Concerto is one of the composer’s most emblematic works, a point of union between an innate melodic talent and the highest quality of virtuoso embroidery dedicated to the instrument that is inextricably linked to Paganini’s name: the violin. The opening Allegro enhances the nuances of the solo instrument through the contrast between the vigour of the martial first theme and the sweetness of the more lyrical second theme. In the second movement, Adagio, inspiration is drawn from the world of Italian melodrama with a strongly expressive theme that alternates between minor and major keys. The final Rondo is the moment of highest virtuosity, with the brilliant and lively character of the theme and the very high level of execution required in the solo episodes in a whirlwind of high registers, complex harmonies, vertiginous scales and arpeggios.
