The programme

Tenor

• La donna è mobileRigolettoG. Verdi

  At an inn by the river the Duke sings, light-heartedly, that women are fickle. He does not know that outside, in the dark, someone has already been paid to kill him.

• Una furtiva lagrimaL'elisir d'amoreG. Donizetti

  Nemorino has seen a tear in Adina's eye and understands that she loves him. The shyest joy in Italian opera, sung almost under the breath.

• Tombe degl'avi mieiLucia di LammermoorG. Donizetti

  Among the tombs of his ancestors, Edgardo waits for a duel he means to lose. He has learned that Lucia has married another man and no longer wishes to live.

• Che gelida maninaLa bohèmeG. Puccini

  Mimì has dropped her key on the dark floor. Rodolfo takes her hand to look for it and, instead of looking, tells her who he is: a poet, poor, in love for a minute now.

• E lucevan le stelleToscaG. Puccini

  On the roof of Castel Sant'Angelo, an hour before the firing squad, Cavaradossi remembers a summer night with Tosca and asks for paper to write her goodbye.

• Vesti la giubbaPagliacciR. Leoncavallo

  Canio has just discovered that his wife is unfaithful, and in a few minutes he must go on stage and make people laugh. He puts on his make-up in tears.

• Questa o quellaRigolettoG. Verdi

  The Duke opens the opera by stating his principle: one woman is as good as another, and faithfulness is a disease. Two minutes and you know everything about him.

• Nessun dormaTurandotG. Puccini

  Night in Peking: by the princess's order nobody may sleep until the stranger's name is known. Alone on the terrace, he knows that at dawn he will win.

• Recondita armoniaToscaG. Puccini

  Painting a fair-haired Magdalene in church, Cavaradossi compares her with Tosca, who is dark. Two different kinds of beauty, he says, and only one he is in love with.

• M'apparì tutt'amorMarthaF. von Flotow

  Lionel has met a woman who called herself Martha, and she has vanished. He sings the memory of her face, the only thing he has left.

• Je crois entendre encoreLes pêcheurs de perlesG. Bizet

  Nadir sees again in his mind the priestess he had sworn not to love. A melody held throughout in pianissimo, among the hardest ever written for tenor.

• Quanto è bella, quanto è caraL'elisir d'amoreG. Donizetti

Soprano

• Io son l'umile ancellaAdriana LecouvreurF. Cilea

  Adriana is a great actress and introduces herself as a humble servant of her art: it is not she who creates, she says, it is poetry passing through her.

• Sì, mi chiamano MimìLa bohèmeG. Puccini

  Mimì answers Rodolfo, who has just asked her who she is. She tells him her name, the silk flowers she embroiders, and the window from which she watches spring arrive.

• Vissi d'arteToscaG. Puccini

  Facing the man who can save her lover in exchange for herself, Tosca stops and asks God why, after a life given to art and to faith, this should happen to her.

• Chi il bel sogno di DorettaLa rondineG. Puccini

  In a Paris drawing room Magda improvises the end of a song left unfinished: a girl discovers love and would not trade it for any fortune.

• Un bel dì vedremoMadama ButterflyG. Puccini

  Butterfly imagines the day Pinkerton's ship will return, describing every detail with absolute certainty. The audience knows the day will not come like that.

• Canto alla lunaRusalkaA. Dvořák

  Rusalka is a water nymph who has fallen in love with a man. She asks the moon, the only one who sees both worlds, to go and tell him she is waiting.

• Dove sono i bei momentiLe nozze di FigaroW.A. Mozart

  Alone, the Countess wonders where the good moments went with a husband who now betrays her. Then she decides she will win them back by cunning.

Mezzo-soprano

• HabaneraCarmenG. Bizet

  Carmen explains to everyone how love works as far as she is concerned: a rebellious bird that obeys nobody, and if you do not love it, it will love you.

• Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voixSamson et DalilaC. Saint-Saëns

  Delilah sings to Samson that her heart opens to his voice. She is lying: she wants the secret of his strength. The most beautiful and coldest seduction of the century.

• Voi lo sapete, o mammaCavalleria rusticanaP. Mascagni

  Santuzza confesses to mamma Lucia that Turiddu has gone back to his old lover, and that she herself, dishonoured, has been left outside the church.

Duets

• BrindisiLa traviataG. Verdi

  Alfredo raises his glass at Violetta's party and the whole room follows him. It is the moment the two first see each other, and here it always closes the evening.

• Tu che m'hai preso il cuorIl paese del sorrisoF. Lehár

  Prince Sou-Chong tells Lisa that his whole heart belongs to her. It comes from an operetta, but it is written with the hand of an opera composer.

• Tu qui, Santuzza?Cavalleria rusticanaP. Mascagni

  On Easter morning, in front of the church, Santuzza confronts Turiddu. He pushes her away, she curses him. From that curse the tragedy never turns back.

• Tornami a dir che m'amiDon PasqualeG. Donizetti

  Night in the garden. Norina and Ernesto find each other again and swear their love in a whisper, before the comedy takes over once more.

• O soave fanciullaLa bohèmeG. Puccini

  Rodolfo and Mimì have only just met by candlelight. They walk out together into the Christmas night singing in unison: in two minutes a love has been born.

• Invitato a qui seguirmi (Invettiva)La traviataG. Verdi

  At Flora's party Alfredo throws his gambling winnings in Violetta's face to humiliate her in front of everyone. One of the cruellest things Verdi wrote, and rarely heard in concert.

• Non ti scordar di meE. De Curtis

  Not from an opera: a song Ernesto De Curtis wrote in 1935 for Beniamino Gigli. The one who leaves asks the one who stays not to forget him.

Piano

• IntermezzoCavalleria rusticanaP. Mascagni

  In the opera it plays before a closed curtain, while the village is in church on Easter morning. Outside, two men are about to kill each other.

• IntermezzoManon LescautG. Puccini

  It separates Manon's sentence from her deportation. Puccini wrote it so the audience would feel time and disaster pass without seeing them.

• Sonata n.7 in do maggiore KV 309W.A. Mozart

  Mozart wrote it in Mannheim, aged twenty-one, for a friend's daughter. It often opens our evenings.

• MéditationThaïsJ. Massenet

  In the opera it is the moment Thaïs decides to change her life. Written for violin and orchestra, here the piano keeps it all to itself.

• Notturno n. 2 – Placid EarthA. Tarantino

  The only piece by a living composer heard in the hall, and it is he who plays it: Andrea Tarantino, pianist and composer, repeatedly awarded in Italy and abroad.

• Clair de luneC. Debussy

  The third piece of the Suite bergamasque, born from a line by Verlaine. Debussy took fifteen years to make up his mind to publish it.

• SinfoniaLe nozze di FigaroW.A. Mozart

  Four minutes that run without ever stopping: Mozart sets a whole day of misunderstandings to music before the curtain has even risen.

• SinfoniaIl barbiere di SivigliaG. Rossini

  Rossini recycled it from two earlier operas, and it works all the same. It is his most famous crescendo.

• Consolation n. 3F. Liszt

  The third of the six Consolations. Liszt, who could do anything at the keyboard, chooses here to do nothing difficult: just a melody coming down.

• Sonata n.8 op. 13 PateticaL. van Beethoven
• IntermezzoIl campielloE. Wolf-Ferrari

  From a light, popular Venetian opera of the early twentieth century, set in a small square. The intermezzo is the page that outlived it.

• SognoGuglielmo RatcliffP. Mascagni

  From the second act of Guglielmo Ratcliff, the opera Mascagni loved most of all his own and which is hardly ever staged today.