Yesterday's Oscar winner Nicola Piovani's concert in the Church of Saints Simon and Judas in Prague was a great success and sold out.
Piovani conducted Maria Rita Combattelli (soprano), Oreste Valente (reciting voice) and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of "La Vita Nuova", a cantata for reciting voice, soprano and small orchestra composed by Piovani himself, inspired by Dante Alighieri's famous work: a musical journey that explores Dante's love for Beatrice in a journey of great narrative and musical beauty.
The concert is a project of the Fondazione Musica per Roma and is organised by the Italian Cultural Institute in Prague (IIC) and the Italian Embassy. "Tonight we will pay homage to Dante Alighieri, to his universal and eternal poetry, through the 'Vita nova', one of his first works written between 1292 and 1294, in that vernacular that, centuries later, would become the Italian language; and we will do so with a composition that combines verses with the music of one of the most famous contemporary Italian composers: Nicola Piovani," said Ambassador Mauro Marsili about the concert. "I am truly delighted," said Marsili, "to be able to offer the public such a prestigious event that once again sees us together, Italians and Czechs, in the creation of a truly unique show.
On the same wavelength was the Director of the IIC, Marialuisa Pappalardo: 'Almost 700 years after the death of the Supreme Poet, Nicola Piovani has taken up the challenge of accompanying the verses of the 'Vita nova', a Stilnovist masterpiece, with music, through the form of the cantata. Piovani leaves to the recitation the words of a young Dante, conquered by gentle love, and entrusts to the vocals of a soprano, the most ineffable dimension, that of the feelings, universal and timeless, that permeate the verses of this masterpiece. The compositional result is a hymn to the beauty of culture in all its expressions, the magic of which we reproduce today through a truly virtuoso artistic encounter and collaboration between Italian and Czech artists and musicians,' Pappalardo noted.
Nicola Piovani is the author of world-famous soundtracks. In the Czech Republic, he is famous for Roberto Benigni's film 'Life is Beautiful', for the music of which Piovani won an Oscar in 1999.
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