Six months of Verdi celebrations
Italian community honours favourite son until this fall
Edmonton Verdi Festival When: Sunday through Nov. 3 Where: various venues, including the Winspear Centre and City Hall Tickets: all events free, except gala (Oct. 11), tickets from Winspear, and 20 Regions of Italy Extravaganza (Nov. 1 -3) Info and tickets: verdifestivaledmonton.ca
The classical music scene, with its roots in the past, loves celebrating anniversaries, and 2013 is turning into a gala year.
There’s Edmonton Opera’s 50th, and the 100th anniversary of the infamous première of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (which the ESO is playing June 14-15). The great German composer Wagner was born 200 years ago, and if Edmonton Opera is not acknowledging that in their forthcoming season, a quick trip down the QE2 will take you to Calgary Opera’s Flying Dutchman next February.
Wagner’s great rival for the pedestal of 19th-century opera was Verdi, and celebrations for the 200th anniversary of his birth (on Oct. 10, 1813) are in full swing across the world, shortly to be joined by an enterprising new festival in Edmonton, the Edmonton Verdi Festival.
It is an initiative by Edmonton’s Italian community, led by the Edmonton branch of the National Congress of Italian-Canadians and the Celebrating Italian Families of Edmonton Society, to honour Italy’s most beloved composer.
The festival is putting on a series of events from this month through November. Participants include local professional musicians, writers and teachers, with visiting academics, but much of the emphasis is on giving performance opportunities to youth, especially local singers.
As Adriana Davies, chair of the festival’s committee, says, “it’s like a Verdi Fringe Festival.”
All the events are free, apart from two. The gala concert on Friday, Oct. 11 at the Winspear, with the Edmonton Youth Orchestra and the Edmonton Opera Chorus, will feature Verdi’s marvellous and beloved choruses, and there will be a charge for the 20 Regions of Italy Extravaganza Weekend that closes the festival.
Events kick off this Sunday — Italian Republic Day — at the Italian Cultural Centre (14230 133 Ave.), with the first of four weekly Sunday afternoon concerts at various venues. All these concerts feature young singers, in arias by Verdi and other Italian opera composers.
Nor has the festival forgotten the Wagner bicentenary: indeed, it has commissioned for the June 9 concert a new piano quintet by Luca Colardo, based on Wagner’s music for Tristan and Isolde. It will be played by Emilio De Mercato and Edmonton’s Vaughan String Quartet.
August sees the participation of the festival in the Servus Heritage Festival. There will be a mainstage performance of song, music and dance titled Verdi per tutti (Verdi for all), on Sunday, Aug. 4.
The writers take over in Verdi and the Spoken Word, on Sept. 18 at Edmonton City Hall. The emphasis will be on new creative works specially written for this occasion by local writers (including myself), celebrating the composer and his impact on popular culture.
Youth is front and centre in Verdi and La Gioventu, a performance event showcasing young talent at Theatre Hall, Santa Maria Goretti Centre on Sept. 28.
The festival wraps up with what is billed as a mini-conference, Incontro con Verdi (Encounters with Verdi) Nov. 1-3. This is part of a weekend of events, the 20 Regions of Italy Extravaganza, at the Santa Maria Goretti Community Centre.
Franco Puccini, scientific co-ordinator and editor at perhaps the world’s most famous opera house, La Scala, Milan, is flying in to talk about Verdi and La Scala. Philip Gossett, a Verdi expert from the University of Chicago, will be discussing the role of Verdi’s music in the fervour that led to the independence of Italy from Austria, and which produced all those wonderful nationalistic Verdi choruses.
Meeting three of the festival performers, all Edmontonians with Italian backgrounds, is a reminder of how much Verdi is in the Italian blood. The festival’s music director, Emilio de Mercato, studied at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, and has recently moved to Edmonton. He says simply, “Verdi is part of our life and history” and that taking part in the festival “honours the effect Verdi has had on my life.”
Sylvia Buttiglione of the Vaughan String Quartet regularly played in Verdi orchestras before leaving Italy for Edmonton. “I never played Verdi without having deep feelings,” she says, and she is fascinated to find how playing Verdi will feel “far from Italy.”
Seventeen-year-old Sabian Compri, who will be singing in the June 23 concert, was born in Edmonton. But she learned her Verdi from the age of three, listening to his operas played on the gramophone by her Italian grandfather. Soon, she says, she knew every note, and at school, when others were listening to rock on their iPods, she was humming Verdi. She’s excited to take part, not only because she loves Verdi’s music, but because “it’s a way of honouring my heritage.”
What all three emphasize is that Verdi is one of those rare composers whose music appeals to all walks of life, from those who otherwise know little of opera and classical music, right through to opera aficionados.
It’s true, too — wander through any Italian town square and you are likely to hear a municipal band (there are still 2,114 of them in Italy) happily playing a Verdi tune. Now, with this festival, Edmonton has the chance to hear those tunes right through the rest of the year.