Il Bel Canto nella Belle Époque
Musics by Gounod, Pinsuti, Arditi, Campana and Puccini
Tenor Matthew Greenblatt will perform the Gounod cycle, and soprano Brooklyn Snow will complement it with music by three Italians who had a Parisian presence, plus a reminder of Puccini’s beloved Parisian opera La bohème, composed in 1895 near the midpoint of the belle époque.
Both singers are alumni of Teatro Nuovo’s bel canto training program, and will be accompanied by pianist Julius Abrahams, a member of the faculty.
Teatro Nuovo’s artistic director Will Crutchfield will introduce the program and discuss the poetry and music of Biondina.
Italian composers and performers have influenced music in the rest of Europe continuously for at least five centuries. Teatro Nuovo’s December 4 program focuses on a particularly fruitful phase of interaction with France: Italian composers who sojourned there, and a great French composer who profited much from absorbing Italian styles.
The centerpiece of the program is a delightful rarity: Biondina, a narrative song-cycle by “Carlo” (Charles) Gounod. The composer of Faust set a suite of poems by Giuseppe Zaffira to music combining his gift of lyrical melody with a keen appreciation for the Italian folk tradition of the stornello, in a touching story of young love and loss. It was written in 1872 at the dawn of what is now called the belle époque (beautiful epoch), the period between the Franco-Prussian War and the outbreak of World War I.
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