la Corunha

The Freiburger Barockorchester (Freiburg Baroque Orchestra) is a period-instrument ensemble focused on the authentic performance of Baroque music, though its repertoire extends into the Classical and Romantic periods as well. The group is mainly led by the concertmaster and often features members of the ensemble as soloists. The Freiburger Barockorchester was founded in 1987 in the German city known as the unofficial "Capital of the Black Forest" by a group of students who shared an interest in playing Baroque music on authentic period instruments. The orchestra performed without a conductor during the first three years of its existence, preferring to select a musician from within its ranks to lead its music on a case-by-case basis. Nevertheless, in 1990, Thomas Hengelbrock was named joint musical director along with Gottfried von der Goltz, a situation that lasted until 1997, when Hengelbrock stepped down. His place was taken by Petra Müllejans, who lead the Freiburger Barockorchester in tandem with von der Goltz. Müllejans was succeeded by Kristian Bezuidenhout in 2017.

La bohème is an opera in four acts, composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) by Henri Murger. The story is set in Paris around 1830 and shows the Bohemian lifestyle (known in French as "la bohème") of a poor seamstress and her artist friends.

Le Concert de la Loge and Julien Chauvin continue the Haydn adventure with the Paris symphonies no.84 and no.86. The conductor and his period instruments orchestra complete the programme with the beautiful Stabat Mater, one of Haydn’s most performed ones during his lifetime. Composed in 1767 during the Sturm and Drang period, the Stabat Mater’s strikingly sober and plain expression (« Fac me vere tecum flere ») doesn’t exclude some outstanding passages, as in the « Sancta Mater, istud agas ».

Lawrence Foster conducts Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (1910), together with the Transylvania State Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, Cluj-Napoca and a cast of seasoned Puccini singers, including Melody Moore (Minnie), Marius Vlad (Dick Johnson) and Lester Lynch (Jack Rance).

Der norditalienische Haudrauf oder besser römische „Orpheus“ Alessandro Stradella stellt musikalisch das Bindeglied zwischen Monteverdi und Scarlatti her. Trotz aller Arten von kriminellen Machenschaften, anrüchigen Liebesaffären, vereitelten Mordversuchen und einem unrühmlichen gewaltsamen Tod auf offener Straße fand Stradella genügend Zeit, um qualitätsvolle Musik zu schreiben, ja es gelang ihm, Geniestreiche an melodischer Invention und kühnen Studien eines klingenden „chiaroscuro“ zu hinterlassen. Die überirdisch schönen Concerti grossi von Arcangelo Corelli wären ohne Stradellas Experimentierstube undenkbar.