TCBO: MICHELE MARIOTTI RETURNS TO BOLOGNA WITH SIBELIUS, ŠOSTAKOVIČ AND SCHUBERT

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by Opera Charm Team

June 15, 2024

Soloist the young Russian-Armenian pianist Eva Gevorgyan.

Set between a small orchestral jewel such as Valse triste by Jean Sibelius and Franz Schubert’s last symphony known as ‘The Great’, the programme for the evening that marks Michele Mariotti‘s return to the Bolognese podium includes a page that exudes the freshness of the youthful age for which it was written. It is the Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra in F major, which Dmitry Šostakovič composed for his nineteen-year-old son Maksim, then a student at the Moscow Central School of Music, and which on Monday 17 June at 8.30 p.m. in the Auditorium Manzoni will be played by a pianist almost the same age as the dedicatee: the twenty-year-old Russian-Armenian Eva Gevorgyan.

Winner of more than forty piano competitions, including first prizes at the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists in 2018 and the Van Cliburn Young Artist Competition in 2019, and most recently the Prix du Bern in Switzerland in 2023, Gevorgyan makes her debut in the Teatro Comunale di Bologna Season. At the head of the Filarmonica del Comunale, audiences will find Michele Mariotti, who from 2008 to 2018 was first Principal Conductor and then Music Director of the Bologna Opera Foundation, and who is now Music Director of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.

It was also much loved by Leonard Bernstein, who gave its first American performance in the dual capacity of soloist and conductor in New York, Šostakovič’s Second Piano Concerto Op. 102, which was christened by the composer’s son in Moscow in 1957. The cheerful and energetic spirit that permeates the first and third movements also won over Disney, who used some musical excerpts for the film ‘Fantasia 2000’. Sibelius wrote Valse triste op. 44 No. 1 for the incidental music of the symbolist drama Kuolema (‘Death’) by his brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt, but it became famous as a stand-alone concert piece after the successful first performance in 1904. “Those who do not know the Symphony in C major know very little about Schubert; and this praise may not seem credible when one thinks of all that Schubert has already given to art. […] This symphony has acted on us like none since Beethoven’s. These are Robert Schumann’s words in the ‘Zeitschrift für Musik’ published by Schott (1840) about Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major D. 944. It was precisely to Schumann that we owe the rediscovery of this symphony – first performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1839 with Felix Mendelssohn conducting – after an initially unhappy fate. Composed between 1825 and 1828, ‘La grande’ had in fact had a troubled genesis and had been rejected by the orchestra of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.

Main Partner of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna’s Symphonic Season 2024 is Intesa Sanpaolo, thanks to whose support most of the concerts’ rehearsals are also open to schools free of charge.

Tickets – from €10 to €40 – are on sale online through Vivaticket and at the Teatro Comunale ticket office (Largo Respighi, 1), Tuesday to Friday from 12 to 6 p.m. and on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; on the day of the concert at the Auditorium Manzoni from 1 hour before until 15 minutes after the start of the performance.

For each concert of the 2024 Symphonic Season, “Notes on the sidelines” continues, a series of meetings with the audience held approximately 30 minutes before the start of the concert in the foyer of the Auditorium Manzoni bar.

Info: https://www.tcbo.it/eventi/stagione-sinfonica-2024-mariotti/

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Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.

Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.

Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Oana Zamfir

Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.

She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.

Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.

Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.

Alexandru Suciu

Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.

His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.

During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.

He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.

Cristina Fieraru

Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.

She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.

She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.

Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.

BIANCA L. NICA

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