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Introduction
Tonight’s programme
Happy New Year! And how better to celebrate than with a musical cornucopia
that takes us from the opera house to the ballrooms of 19th-century Vienna, in
the process highlighting three composers who celebrate anniversaries this year:
Wagner, Verdi and Britten.
We open in dramatic fashion with the storm-tossed overture to Wagner’s first
true operatic masterpiece, The Flying Dutchman. The cosmopolitan nature of
Verdi’s genius is revealed in arias from I vespri siciliani – a work that began life
as a grand French opera, first heard in Paris – and La forza del destino, which
was premiered in St Petersburg. Welsh soprano Rebecca Evans, making a
welcome return to the orchestra, also offers arias from Die Fledermaus and
Lehár’s Paganini. Rossini also takes a bow, in the form of his scintillating
overture to La scala di seta and through the eyes of Benjamin Britten in his
finely wrought orchestrations of Soirées musicales.
But New Year wouldn’t be New Year without some Viennese waltzes and
polkas, and these are supplied by the ‘Waltz King’ himself, Johann Strauss II,
beginning 2013 in the most upbeat manner imaginable.
Please turn off all mobile phones and digital watches during the performance.
Try to stifle unavoidable coughs until the normal breaks in the performance.
Photography and recording is not permitted.
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