New Year’s Concert

In the first part of this concert two great French composers will be the first to wish you the happiest 2017: Georges Bizet (1838-1875) and Francis Poulenc (1899-1903). L’Arlésienne (suites Nºs 1 e 2), were written by Georges Bizet as incidental music for the homonymous play premiered on 1st October 1872; however, Daudet’s dramatic work as well as Bizet’s music met mild acceptance from the public and the play closed after only 21 performances. But with its energetic and intensely lyrical themes L’Arlésiene is nowadays a frequent work of the symphonic repertoire.  Francis Poulenc’s Gloria (FP 177), a commission by the Koussevitsky Foundation, had immediate success in its première in Boston on 21st January1961, two years before the composer’s death. Emanating devotion and reverence, or imprinting sometimes more earthly accents, Gloria is divided in six movments or sections whose text follows the Roman Catholic liturgy of the ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo’ in a work that the composer – a man of deep religious convictions – has called ‘a great choral symphony’.

The operetta, a musical genre forerunner of the present musical comedy flourished in France thanks to Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) in the middle of the 19^th century. The Austrian bourgeoisie followed the Parisian trend and adopted operetta being Johann Strauss its undisputed sovereign. La Offenbach’s Belle Hélène, an opéra comique with a triumphal premiere in Decemeber 1864 at the Théâtre des Varietés in Paris, tells the story of the fair Helen and her abduction by Paris, the Troyan prince. Les Contes d’Hoffmann, an opera written also by Offenbach, has its more popular moment in the dark Venice where a soprano and a mezzo sing the famed Barcarolle. And finally the bubbling joy of an imperial and prosperous Vienna such as Johann Strauss has set it to music in his operettas: the Kaiser-Walzer (op.437), composed in1889 as a joint tribute to Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph and Kaiser William I, Frühlingstimmen (Voices of Spring) (op.410) an orchestral waltz written in 1882 and dedicated to the pianist Alfred Grünner, a chorus from the Act III from Der Zigeunerbaron, written in 1885 and last and not the least a true gem of Viennese operetta premiered in 1974 and maybe the most performed all over the world: Die Fledermaus (The Bat) with its Act II finale where everyone toasts to joy and happiness.

Soprano | Susana Gaspar

Mezzosoprano | Maria Luísa de Freitas

Conductor | David Parry

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Coro do Teatro Nacional de São Carlos
Principal Conductor | Giovanni Andreoli

Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa
Principal Conductor | Joana Carneiro

Georges Bizet | L’Arlesienne: Suite n.º 1 (n.º 1, 2, 3) e Suite n.º 2 (n.º 4)

Francis Poulenc | Gloria

Jacques Offenbach | La belle Hélène: “Vers tes autels, Jupin” / La belle Hélène: “Invocation a Venus” / Les Contes d’Hoffmann: “Barcarolle”

Johann Strauss | Kaiser-Walzer, op. 437 / Friihlingsstimmen, op. 410 / Zigeunerbaron: “Hurra, die Schlacht mitgemacht” / Die Fledermaus: Finale (2.º Ato)