SYMPHONIC SEASON 2025
Zubin Mehta conductor
Inauguration Respighi Festival
Respighi | stravinsky
FESTIVAL RESPIGHI BOLOGNA – IV EDITION
INAUGURAL CONCERT IN COLLABORATION WITH MUSICA INSIEME
SEPT. 21 | H 8:30 P.M.
Manzoni Auditorium
EXTRAORDINARY CONCERT
Subscribers to the Bologna Municipal Theater’s 2025 Symphonic Season and Musica Insieme are given priority on purchase (up to two tickets), during the period from October 29 to January 15, with a dedicated discount as listed in the table.
See the price table
PROGRAM
Ottorino Respighi
Ancient Arias and Dances, Suite No. 3
The pines of Rome
Igor’ Fyodorovich Stravinsky
The Spring Festival
PROGRAM
Ottorino Respighi
Ancient Arias and Dances, Suite No. 3
When he died in 1936, Ottorino Respighi had left behind all kinds of music. But only his three Suites inspired by ancient Italian themes for lute had occupied such a long compositional span, from 1916 to 1931, a sign of a deep interest cultivated in parallel with his larger-scale compositions. Respighi’s love of sixteenth-seventeenth-century music is most evident in these festive and inspired pages, where the transcription is never a mere exercise in style, but an attempt to combine the ancient with the modern in a fresh and brilliant way. In doing so, Respighi rediscovered such rare pieces as a Gagliarda by Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo’s father, or the Ballet “Count Orlando” by the Genoese Simone Molinaro, one of the greatest lutenists of the late 16th century. Respighi was a voracious hunter of early music, and his research, even when he settled permanently in Rome, did not leave his Bologna behind: that is why the Third Suite features a Passacaglia by Lodovico Roncalli, a musician from Bergamo who lived in Bologna in the late 17th century.
The pines of Rome
In Respighi we find immersive sensory visions, a fairy-tale world that becomes a source of mysterious and imaginative theatrical inventions. In the “Pines of Rome,” the second page of the Roman Trilogy written between 1916 and 1926, the world’s most widely performed composer from Bologna puts to good use and brings to surprising new heights the lessons of Rimsky-Korsakov, obtained during his stay in St. Petersburg as first viola of the imperial orchestra. But in the “Pines” the main currents of European musical culture are also absorbed. The Valle Giulia fountain is reminiscent of Smetana’s “Vltava,” the Trevi fountain seems to echo Debussy’s “La Mer,” while the spirit of the “Rite of Spring” is all in the Circenses and Ottobrata.
Igor’ Fyodorovich Stravinsky
The Spring Festival
Perhaps no debut in the history of music has had such a stormy outcome as the one that accompanied Stravinsky’s “Sacre” in Paris, where on May 29, 1913, an uproar broke out among the audience, divided between fierce accusers and admiring supporters of the ballet’s audacious harmonic solutions. The world of Romantic passions here waned precipitously, overwhelmed by a new way of resolving the musical discourse, no longer entrusted to the unfolding of an idea or theme, but carried on by rhythmic blocks interrupted from time to time by traditional Russian chants, which lend the scene an aura of mysterious pagan sacredness. But after more than 110 years, the Sagra retains intact its ability to convey to the listener, even in the complexity of its construction, a direct and spontaneous musical message.
PROGRAM
Hector Berlioz
Overture, “Le Carnaval Romain”
In 1844 Hector Berlioz, among the great fathers of French Romanticism and one of the greatest innovators in the symphonic field, wrote a concert piece in A major with an extensive solo part reserved for the English horn. Thus was born the Overture “Le Carnaval romain,” a brilliant piece of broad melodic generosity, full of themes from the opera Benvenuto Cellini, composed six years earlier. The themes of the opera used, in fact, are those related to the Roman carnival scenes from which the overture takes its title.
Claude Debussy
“Prèlude à l’après-midi d’un faune.”
The notes are released like sensual exhalations in “Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune” (1892-94) Claude Debussy’s first great symphonic masterpiece, which is immediately presented with its “new breath” (Pierre Boulez’s definition) thanks to the flute’s enigmatic opening phrase, “so full of voluptuousness as to become anguished,” Vladimir Jankélévitch’s words.
ORCHESTRA DEL TEATRO COMUNALE DI BOLOGNA
ORCHESTRA DEL TEATRO COMUNALE DI BOLOGNA
An orchestra of great tradition, Sergiu Celibidache, ZoltánPeskó, Vladimir Delman, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, and Michele Mariotti have taken turns at its helm as music directors. Among the conductors who have led the ensemble are Gary Bertini, Myung-Whun Chung, James Conlon, Pinchas Steinberg, Valery Gergiev, Eliau Inbal, Vladimir Jurowskij, Daniel Oren, Peter Maag, Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti, Mstislav Rostropovič, Esa Pekka Salonen, Georg Solti, Christian Thielemann, Charles Dutoit, Georges Prêtre. The Teatro Comunale Orchestra is frequently invited abroad (Holland, Romania, Spain, France and Switzerland) and has participated in prestigious festivals (Amsterdam 1987, Parma 1990, Wiesbaden 1994, Santander 2004 and 2008, Aix en Provence 2005, Savonlinna 2006, Macau 2013, Muscat 2015, Guanajuato in Mexico 2017, Paris 2018). A privileged relationship with Japan has resulted in several tours, most recently in June 2019 in Osaka, Tokyo, Yokohama, Fukuoka, with Rigoletto and Il barbiere di Siviglia.
Numerous record productions, including La Favorita diretta da Richard Bonynge, Oberto Conte di San Bonifacio diretto da Zoltán Peskó, Il barbiere di Siviglia diretto da Giuseppe Patané, La figlia del reggimento diretta da Bruno Campanella, Le maschere e La bohème dirette da Gianluigi Gelmetti, La scala di seta diretta da Gabriele Ferro, Macbeth, Manon Lescaut, Rigoletto, La cenerentola, Messa Solenne e le produzioni videografiche dei Vespri siciliani e di Giovanna d’Arco e Werther dirette da Riccardo Chailly, Armida diretta da Daniele Gatti, Simon Boccanegra e Attila diretti da Michele Mariotti .
The Orchestra, led by Mariotti, has recorded for Decca a CD of sacred arias with Juan Diego Flórez and for Sony an album of romantic arias with Nino Machaidze; for Deutsche Grammophon Le Comte Ory with Flórez and La Nuit de Mai, opera arias and songs by Leoncavallo, with Placido Domingo; and for the PENTATONE label a CD of Rossini overtures to celebrate 150 years since the composer’s death.In April 2021 the orchestra recorded for Deutsche Grammophon a forthcoming disc with tenor Benjamin Bernheim and Frédéric Chaslin on the podium.
Nel marzo 2013 i corpi artistici del Teatro Comunale di Bologna diretti da Mariotti sono stati protagonisti del concerto inaugurale del IV Festival internazionale Mstislav Rostropovich di Mosca eseguendo la Messa da Requiem di Verdi. Poi nell’ottobre del 2015 hanno inaugurato la rassegna Lingotto Musica presso l’Auditorium Giovanni Agnelli di Torino, dove hanno eseguito lo Stabat Mater, l’Ouverture e le Danze dal Guillaume Tell di Rossini. Inoltre, la nuova produzione della Bohème al Teatro Comunale, con la regia di Graham Vick e la direzione di Mariotti, ha vinto il Premio Abbiati come miglior spettacolo del 2018.
After thirty years of participation in the Rossini Opera Festival (from 1988 to 2016), 2017 marked a new collaboration between the Municipal Theatre of Bologna and the Verdi Festival of Parma which, among the various productions, saw the Orchestra engaged in the Stiffelio signed by Graham Vick. Staged at the Farnese Theatre, it achieved a great success with the public and critics by winning the Special Prize of the 37th “Franco Abbiati” Music Critics Award. In 2019 the Orchestra was the protagonist of the Verdi Festival in the Luisa Miller at the church of San Francesco del Prato in Parma and in the Aida at the Verdi Theatre in Busseto, while in 2020 of a symphonic concert conducted by Valerij Gergiev at the Teatro Regio in Parma. Since January 2022 the Musical Director of the Municipal Theatre of Bologna is Oksana Lyniv.
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11 DEC | H 20:30
Auditorium Manzoni
Oct. 31 | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
26 SEP | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
31 MAY | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
21 SET | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
16 SEP | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
APR 30 | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
JUN 20 | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
10 MAG | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
6 MAG | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
24 APR | H 20.30
Auditorium Manzoni
28 MAR | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
1 DEC | H 20:30
Auditorium Manzoni
16 MAR | H 5:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
12 MAR | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
6 MAR | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
17 FEB | H 20.30
Auditorium Manzoni
8 FEB | H 8:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
2 FEB | H 5:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
JAN 12 | H 5:30 p.m.
Auditorium Manzoni
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