Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Part of: Joyce DiDonato Perspectives
Chicago Symphony Orchestra is also performing November 16.
Joyce DiDonato is also performing November 22, December 15, April 5, April 6, April 7, April 8, April 13, and May 26.
Performers
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, Music Director and Conductor
Joyce DiDonato, Mezzo-Soprano
Program
BIZET Roma
BERLIOZ La mort de Cléopâtre
RESPIGHI Pines of Rome
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission. Please note there will be no late seating before intermission.
At a Glance
BIZET Roma
Roma is the orchestral score Bizet composed under the spell of his Italian travels of the late 1850s. The obscurity of the work is inexplicable, for every page displays the gifts we know so well from the composer’s later Carmen: a fine ear for color and rhythmic élan, and for pure, unassuming melody. What Tchaikovsky later said, admiringly, of Carmen could as easily apply here: “The music has no pretensions to profundity, but it is so charming in its simplicity, so vigorous, not contrived but instead sincere.”
BERLIOZ La mort de Cléopâtre
La mort de Cléopâtre (The Death of Cleopatra) was the first music Berlioz wrote that reflects the spell Shakespeare had cast over him. Berlioz begins with unsettled music for orchestra that leads to a series of alternating recitatives and arias for Cleopatra. At the heart of the scene, just before the final aria, Berlioz places a meditation—neither recitative nor aria—that is one of his most extraordinary achievements. Headed by a quotation from Shakespeare, Juliet’s “How if when I am laid into the tomb,” it is a cry from the heart, with the vocal line soaring (and plummeting) over an oddly syncopated, pulsing accompaniment. The final, impassioned aria begins conventionally enough, but disintegrates as Cleopatra herself falls apart. The final pages, in which the queen dies, are unlike any other music composed at the time.
RESPIGHI Pines of Rome
Several days before Respighi made his Chicago debut in 1926, Pines of Rome had received its New York premiere in a spectacular performance at Carnegie Hall under Arturo Toscanini. It quickly became Respighi’s signature piece and that rarest of works: a sequel that outdoes the original (Fountains of Rome) in brilliance and popularity. Unlike Ravel, who was embarrassed by the hit status of his Bolero, Respighi quite enjoyed the success of his most famous creation—he even named his country villa “The Pines.”