Opera Tickets Italy

Michael Hofstetter, the highly respected and versatile German conductor, takes to the stage at Venice's Gran Teatro La Fenice for a concert that features the music of Antonio Vivaldi, Antonio Lotti and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, three notable Italian composers of the Baroque era. Hofstetter is a sought-after interpreter of Baroque music with a reputation that extends all over the world. Conducting the renowned La Fenice Orchestra and Choir, the programme is an ideal opportunity to see Hofstetter, a man who is known for his authentic interpretations of period music, in action.

The concert opens with Sinfonia Al Santo Sepolcro in B minor, RV 169, composed by Antonio Vivaldi sometime between 1718 and 1720. The mood Vivaldi generates in his Sinfonia is very different from the lively and sometimes exuberant style of his better-known concerti. This is partly down to the fact that the piece is a sacred work, probably written for an Easter mass. The work starts with a slow, almost agonising pace that asks listeners to almost imagine the suffering of Christ. It is arranged in two movements, the first an adagio molto followed by a second of a slightly less sedate character, an allegro ma poco.

Antonio Lotti's Credo in F Major for choir, orchestra and continuo, written sometime around 1718, follows. In the original score, strings accompany eight vocalists – two sopranos, two altos, two tenors and a pair of basses – in a section named Crucifixus. This particular passage of the Credo, part of the Catholic mass, gained popularity in the nineteenth century when it was included in a collection of sacred music by Johann Friedrich Rochlitz, a German playwright, academic and critic. Lotti, a Venetian who once held the role of maestro di cappella at Saint Mark's Basilica in the city, is known to have written several musical settings for the Credo. This one is the most well-known today.

Stabat Mater, a piece penned by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi in 1736, is a Baroque musical setting of a mediaeval hymn of the same name which reflects on the suffering of the Virgin Mary during the crucifixion of Christ. This work concludes the concert and is one of the last pieces Pergolesi wrote. He died at the young age of 26, the same year his Stabat Mater was completed. Often considered to be among the highlights of late Italian Baroque music, the piece was originally intended as a chamber vocal work but has since gone on to be performed in many auditoria thanks to its seemingly effortless control of melody and counterpoint.

With three such carefully selected devotional works on the programme, led by a foremost conductor of Baroque music, this concert offers a fascinating insight into the sacred nature of some of the best early eighteenth-century Italian compositions.