Hugo Advanced French

This concert is Renee Fleming's very personal homage to 'Fin de Siecle' Vienna. At the turn of the last century, the capital of the Austrian Empire was also one of the cultural centers for the fi ne arts and, in particular, for music. The city of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, a 'melting pot' of cultures and musical traditions, attracted gifted musicians and composers alike and provided the perfect soil for much of the greatest music of that time. With this selection of works by Hugo Wolf (1860 -1903) and Gustav Mahler (1860 -1911), combined with more progressive songs by Alexander Zemlinsky (1871 - 1942), Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951) and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897 - 1957), Renee Fleming presents to us the full variety of this unique epoch. The venue of her recital with Maciej Pikulski at the piano is, of course, the Golden Hall of the Musikverein Vienna.

Puccini’s musical vision of the American West is vividly brought to life in Giancarlo Del Monaco’s atmospheric production. Deborah Voigt is Minnie, the girl of the title and owner of a bar in a Californian mining camp. Marcello Giordani sings Dick Johnson, the bandit-turned-lover hunted by the cynical sheriff Jack Rance (Lucio Gallo), who wants Minnie for himself. Complete with whiskey-drinking cowboys, gunplay, a poker game, and a snowstorm, La Fanciulla del West is Puccini at his most colorful.