Mercadante: Emma d’Antiochia – ouverture
Rossini: Aureliano in Palmira – ouverture
Rossini: Semiramide – ouverture
Verdi: Jérusalem – ouverture
Verdi: Nabucco – ouverture
Liszt: Sardanapalo
Sardanapalo, King of Assyria: Airam Hernández
Mirra, an Ionian slavegirl: Joyce El-Khoury
Beleso, a priest: Oleksandr Pushniak
Featuring: Female Choir of the Hungarian National Choir (choirmaster: Csaba Somos)
Conductor: Giampaolo Bisanti
130 years after the death of a composer, rarely are such works discovered that substantially alter our view of the oeuvre. Ferenc Liszt was a unique composer in this regard as well: the surviving first act of the opera he based on Byron’s tragedy was first performed in Weimar in 2018.
The manuscript of the composition was found at Weimar’s Goethe and Schiller Archive, and David Trippett, a musicologist at the University of Cambridge, thinks the music of Sardanapalo is breath-taking. It reflects the influence of Bellini, Meyerbeer and Wagner, and it combines an Italian lyricism with Liszt’s unmistakably original harmonic vocabulary. Trippett reconstructed the piece from the manuscript, and also wrote an orchestration for it, and this is the version that will be performed in Budapest.
In the first half of the concert, overtures written by Italian composers during the decades preceding Sardanapalo, including both popular and seldom played pieces, will be performed.
This performance of the Budapest Spring Festival is presented by Müpa Budapest.
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