St Petersburg, Concert Hall

Puccini. Messa di Gloria. Arias and duets from operas


Second concert of the tenth subscription

PROGRAMME:
Messa di Gloria
Soloists:
Dmitry Voropaev (tenor)
Vladimir Moroz (baritone)

Arias and duets from operas La bohème, Turandot, Tosca, Gianni Schicchi, Madama Butterfly
Soloists:
Zhanna Dombrovskaya (soprano)
Irma Gigolaty (soprano)
Elena Karpesh (soprano)
Alexander Mikhailov (tenor)
Dmitry Voropaev (tenor)
Edem Umerov (baritone)

Chorus and Orchestra
Conductor: Pavel Petrenko
Principal Chorus Master: Andrei Petrenko
Musical Preparation: Alla Brosterman

A native of the small Italian town of Lucca, the fifth generation musician Giacomo Puccini presented the immense score of his Messa di Gloria as his degree work upon graduating from the Conservatorio. It was first performed on 12 July 1880 at a celebration in honour of Saint Polino and resulted in a veritable storm of opposing and at times downright scandalous reactions. The senior priest at the local cathedral called the music of the Mass “hooligan-like and not remotely connected with divine worship” and refused to bless it in order for it to be performed in churches. Puccini’s composition teacher, maestro Mosco Carner, considered the work “rather free-and-easy, but not without its charms.” With the wider public, the Mass drew frenzied delight, while the composer’s fellow students from the Conservatorio unanimously called the work the last word in Italian spiritual music.
And although in his debut vocal and symphony work the Conservatorio’s young graduate did not avoid imitating his older contemporary, the great Giuseppe Verdi, the Messa di Gloria sounds like pure Puccini, with the same sense of theatrical drama with which the composer’s operatic masterpieces would resound decades later. Puccini was later not ashamed to use fragments of the Mass in the operas Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot among other works. The composer himself admitted that the Messa di Gloria was thus named because it is rather solemn than prayful in terms of its character. This also explains the flamboyancy of its language, and such extraordinary details – for the Church – as the borrowed theme from the Italian folk song Guardo il cielo in the section Qui tollis peccata mundi. It is clear that the young experimentalist was not remotely attempting to pay tribute to the liturgical canon in his liturgical opus, instead testing the limits of his own inventiveness and free-thinking.
Marina Iovleva

Age category 6+

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