Opera Tickets Italy

The Italian baroque music specialist Enrico Onofri takes to the stage at Venice's remarkable Malibran Theatre to conduct the renowned La Fenice Orchestra with music by Franz Joseph Haydn, Antonio Sacchini, Michael Haydn, Joseph Martin Kraus, Giuseppe Sammartini and Luigi Boccherini. In a varied programme of baroque and early classical styles, this wonderful concert series offers audience-goers the chance to hear some lesser-performed pieces in the modern musical repertoire with a highly skilled maestro and ensemble.

The concert begins with the overture of Franz Joseph Haydn's opera buffa, Il mondo della luna, which translates as The World on the Moon. Its debut was on 3 August 1777 at the Eszterháza palace in Hungary, where Haydn lived at the time. The overture is almost symphonic-like in the way it builds and some of it was, indeed, repurposed by Haydn for the opening movement of his 63rd symphony. Sacchini's Chaconne in C minor follows. A chaconne is an occasional feature of baroque music which is used to provide melodic variations, typically over a simple harmonic progression, such as ground bass. Sacchini's chaconne adheres to the orthodox use of baroque modes and is arranged for two oboes, two horns, strings and a bass continuo part.

Symphony No. 39 in C major, P31, by Michael Haydn, follows. Michael was Franz Joseph's younger brother and he wrote this work while he was living in Salzburg in 1788. Consisting of three movements, the work is often said to have influenced Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his later career. The next piece is from a similar era, the Olympie overture written by Kraus, a German-Swedish composer of both the late baroque and early classical periods. This music was written in 1791 for a production of a play called Olympie. The production premiered on 7 January 1792 in Stockholm. Kraus died later that year.

Two pieces follow, Sammartini's Symphony in A Major, J-C62, and Boccherini's Symphony No 6 in C minor, G519. The former is a baroque piece in three movements arranged for two trumpets and strings. It was written about 1750 but the exact date of its premiere is unknown to musicologists. Boccherini's 6th Symphony dates from 1788 and is considered to be among his best works in the symphonic form. With Onofri in charge, a man who has won the prestigious Premio Abbiati prize before as best soloist of the year, these concerts are sure to enlighten anyone with an interest in late 18th-century European music.