On Thursday, December 5, 2024, at the Teatro Sociale (8:30 PM), the 2024/2025 Theater Season of the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti will commence, running until May 2025 and featuring the Prose Season and Other Paths (from December 7), Operetta, and a series of musical events. The season kicks off with music and a concert that bridges different soundscapes: The Five Elements: Earth Air Water Fire Ether, a project by violinist Alessandro Quarta, accompanied on this occasion by pianist Giuseppe Magagnino and the strings of the Italian Philharmonic Orchestra. The Five Elements is music without spatial-temporal boundaries, without genre or style limits. From the first notes, one senses a cinematic, evocative score, rich with images that forcefully present themselves to the listener. It is music full of colors, in a continuous contrast of light and shadow, with strong suggestions that whirl around. The project was conceived by the imaginative violinist Alessandro Quarta as a succession of visions where notes replace words. Earth is imagined as a lady whose voice, represented by a melancholic waltz played by the solo violin, is that of an old lady carrying millions of years on her shoulders. Next is Water, born from an image tied to a place very dear to the Salento musician: “The most important Eastern Gate of the Mediterranean, Otranto is the easternmost city in Italy, the first to see the sunrise, and where at five in the morning you smell the sea and see a sky tinged with red, towards the East.” Water begins with a Middle Eastern theme on cellos: “Everything starts in the African desert from a drop of water that, before becoming the sea, is a stream, then a river, finally a stormy sea, wonderful. Then, like a rewind, the tape rewinds to return to the origins.” Air, an apparently invisible element, is breath, wind, hurricane. Three chords, three motifs: E minor, G major, B major. The “seventeenth-century” style of dense, complex writing is recognizable: a three-voice fugue, progressions in the manner of Vivaldi. Fire begins with a Cuban tango: it is the fire of eros that fuels life, sexuality, it is the most overwhelming moment of the entire work. Finally, Ether, considered by the Greeks as the fifth element, and in The Five Elements the concluding piece that evokes a cold land. It evokes peace, tranquility, but the calm lasts only a moment and the music takes off again until the end of the work. Violinist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer, Alessandro Quarta has musically grown with the greatest conductors in the world such as Maazel, Inbal, Dutoit, Rostropovich, Chung, Pretre, Metha, Morricone. At the same time, he has approached the crossover world collaborating with world-renowned artists, including Carlos Santana, Lucio Dalla, Mark Knopfler, Boy George, Dionne Warwick, Celine Dion, Liza Minnelli, Joe Cocker, Lenny Kravitz, Jovanotti. In 2017, he was awarded in Montecitorio as the “Best Italian Excellence in the World” for music. His piece “Dorian Gray,” composed, arranged, and performed live in a world premiere with Roberto Bolle at the Arena di Verona, achieved great success.
Alessandro Quarta has also participated in writing original music for Walt Disney films and Rai Cinema and is regularly invited to the most important theaters and festivals in the world. After the inauguration with The Five Elements, the Opera section of the Theater Season will continue on Thursday, December 12, 2024, with a prestigious duo of pianists, Michele Campanella and Monica Leone, who will perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Franz Liszt’s brilliant transcription for two pianos, marking the new partnership between Fondazione Teatro Donizetti and Fondazione Polli Stoppani. As per established tradition, the end-of-year and New Year festivities will be marked respectively by the Christmas Concert and the New Year’s Concert. The first, on Saturday, December 21 at 3:30 PM, will feature the choir I Piccoli Musici directed by Mario Mora, with a program titled The Sound of the Voice. The New Year’s greeting, with the Italian Philharmonic Orchestra, will take place on Wednesday, January 1, 2025, at 11:00 AM, featuring notes from famous composers such as Ponchielli, Bizet, Brahms, Giménez, and Strauss Jr.
All concerts are scheduled at the Teatro Sociale.
For the Opera, the Teatro Donizetti will host, on Friday, January 10 (8:00 PM) and Sunday, January 12 (3:30 PM), one of Verdi’s masterpieces, Rigoletto, in the new production co-produced by the Teatri di OperaLombardia.
