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A special four-days in Cremona to listen and talk about chamber music, visit the famous Violin Museum and the Stauffer Academy: all thanks to the creative enterprise Le Dimore del Quartetto, already very active all year round. A week that sees two leading orchestral formations in Italy, such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe with a conductor like Antonio Pappano, also together with a talent like the young Beatrice Rana; and the new Utopia Orchestra with its founder Theodor Currentzis. Music – and theater – in the “Shepherds’ Cantata”, which already anticipates the Christmas atmosphere, in a Commedia dell’Arte key.
Pordenone
On the 26th at the Teatro Verdi the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, director Antonio Pappano, with the pianist Beatrice Rana. Music Elgar, Dvorak, Schumann (the Concert). Other dates: 25th at Valli in Reggio Emilia, 27th at Comunale in Vicenza, 28th at Galli in Rimini. The tour then continues in Germany.
Cremona
Archipelago takes place from 21st to 24th November, an excellent opportunity for close listening to a lot of chamber music, including concerts and artistic residencies with excellent young chamber groups together with soloists. In addition to masterclasses and concerts, the city will also host networking activities and meetings on the chamber music supply chain. The 21st masterclass (which also continues in the following days) of the Cremona Quartet at the Stauffer Academy; same place at 5pm the Trio Ernest and Nikolas Altieri (viola). On the 22nd at 7.30 pm at the Chamber of Commerce here will be the Fibonacci and Kandinsky Quartets. On the 23rd at 6.00 pm at the Stauffer Academy the Tempus Trio with Giulia Cellacchi (violin); at 7.30 pm at Palazzo Guazzoni Zaccaria the Goldberg Quartet and Zoe Canestrelli (viola). On the 24th at 3pm visit to the Stauffer Academy. At 6pm guided tour of the Violin Museum; at 7pm at the Arvedi Auditorium double concert with ensembles and soloists who will have animated the previous days of the festival.
Brescia
On the 20th at the Teatro Grande the Utopia Orchestra with its director Teodor Currentzis and the violinist Barnabás Kelemen; on the program are Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Symphony no. 5 by Tchaikovsky. Another date on the 22nd at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome. For the first time in the capital, Currentzis, director of Stuttgart Radio, founded this group, made up of more than one hundred musicians from around thirty countries.
Roma
From 21 November to 3 December at the Sala Umberto Cantata dei pastori, with Peppe Barra and Lalla Esposito, music by Giorgio Mellone. A seventeenth-century text, written by the Jesuit Andrea Perrucci, which has continued to be staged to this day. Year after year the script has been enriched with all the languages, highs and lows of the theatre: farce, vaudeville, commedia dell’arte, musicals. Here are two Neapolitans, poor: Razzullo, scribe, ended up in Palestine for the census wanted by the Roman Emperor; and Sarchiapone, his fellow villager, on the run for the crimes committed. They cross paths with Mary and Joseph, who are looking for a safe shelter in Bethlehem, where they can give birth to Jesus. The journey is hindered by Belphagor, the devil, with the intent of preventing the power of good from arriving on earth and that the humanity can be redeemed from original sin. At the same time the couple is protected by the sword of Gabriello Arcangelo. Popular tradition gradually distorted that text of the Counter-Reformation, vulgarizing it, overturning its educational and edifying intentions, thus managing to snatch it from the inevitable oblivion of time. The show was staged at midnight on December 24th. After the Christmas Eve dinner, people had to make a choice: to Mass or to the Theatre? A show that wants to put the language, the music and the history of the city of Naples at the centre, the only place in the world where it has been possible to create, and preserve for so long, a show of an indefinable genre, a theatrical unicum, the fruit of centuries of devotion. An old-fashioned Italian show, where, on the shabby tables, the actors played multiple roles, in a whirlwind of disguises that amuses the audience and scares the two hungry protagonists.