Opera Tickets Italy

The highly sought-after Austrian conductor, Christian Arming, takes up the baton with La Fenice Orchestra, Venice's premier classical music concert ensemble, at the historic Malibran Theatre built on the site of Marco Polo's former residence. This concert programme features music written by one of Austria's best-loved composers, Johann Strauss the Younger, plus an orchestral suite drawn from Richard Strauss' opera, Der Rosenkavalier Op. 59, first performed at the State Opera of Saxony in Dresden on 26 January 1911.

The programme opens with music by Strauss II. The overture from his operetta Die Fledermaus commences proceedings, music which premiered on 5 April 1874 in the composer's home city of Vienna. This is followed by Wein, Weib und Gesang, Op. 333, a Viennese waltz which is often translated into English as 'Wine, Women and Song'. Another Straussian waltz follows, this time Rosen aus dem Süden, Op.388, or 'Roses from the South'. The pace shifts somewhat with a polka, Éljen a Magyar!, Op.332, which debuted in the Hungarian city of Pest in March 1869. This part of the concert concludes with Wiener Blut, Op. 354, another waltz melody composed by Strauss which was dedicated to the marriage of Emperor Franz Joseph I's daughter.

The concert proceeds with a rendition of Der Rosenkavalier suite by Johann Strauss' namesake, the German composer, Richard Strauss. With an opening that matches the opera, this orchestral suite soon moves on to music drawn from Act II and Act III, ending with a coda in waltz time. This music was first performed in concert format on 5 October 1944 in New York.

Further music from the Austrian composer follows, however, beginning with the ever-popular Pizzicato Polka backed up by his Egyptischer Marsch, Op. 335, commissioned for the inauguration of the Suez Canal. Two further Strauss pieces are on the programme, Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Op. 214, and Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437, which serves as the concert's finale. The former was first performed on 24 November 1858 while the latter, which premiered in Berlin on 21 October 1889, is usually referred to in English simply as 'Emperor Waltz'.

Arming was born in 1971, a maestro who is associated with both symphonic and operatic conducting. He was educated at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and served as the Music Director of the Liege Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 2011 to 2019. Arming has made numerous recordings over the course of his career including works by Janáček, Schubert, Mahler and Brahms.

At such a prestigious Venetian music venue and with such a varied programme of crowd-pleasing music, this concert is set to be a veritable feast for the ears for all music fans who attend it.