Belvedere di Villa Rufolo

Venerdì 8 luglio
Belvedere di Villa Rufolo, ore 20.00
Concerto Celebrativo dei 70 anni del Festival
Orchestra del Teatro di San Carlo di Napoli
Direttore Juraj Valčuha
Musiche di Wagner
Posto unico € 50

Programma

Richard Wagner
I Maestri cantori di Norimberga, Preludio atto I
Tristano e Isotta, Preludio e Morte di Isotta
Parsifal, Incantesimo del Venerdì Santo
Sigfrido, Mormorio della Foresta
Tannhäuser, Ouverture

Juraj Valčuha
Juraj Valcuha has been appointed Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra as of June 2022. Since 2016 he has been Conductor Musicale of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, as well as First Guest Conductor of the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin. He was also Principal Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai from 2009 to 2016. Born in Bratislava, he studied composition and conducting there, continuing his studies in St. Petersburg with Ilya Musin and in Paris.
In 2006 he made his debut with the Orchestre National de France and began his Italian career at the Comunale di Bologna with La bohème. Since then he has appeared on the podium of the most prestigious orchestras such as the Münchner Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, Berliner Philharmoniker, Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the American orchestras of Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, National Symphony and New York Philharmonic, Philharmonia in London, Filarmonica della Scala and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. With the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai he has toured the Musikverein in Vienna, the Philharmonie in Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Zurich, the Abu Dhabi Classics season and the Enescu Festival in Bucharest.
The last two seasons have seen him perform with the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco and Pittsburg Symphony, BBC Symphony, Philharmonia, Wiener Symphoniker, Münchner Philharmoniker, Radio Orchestras of Frankfurt, Hamburg, BBC London, Konzerthausorchester in Berlin and on tour in the Baltic capitals, as well as the Orchestras of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and OSN Rai.
In the opera field he conducted in particular Parsifal at the Budapest Opera, Jenůfa, Peter Grimes and Salome at the Comunale di Bologna, L’amore delle tre melarance and Faust at the Florence Opera, and Turandot, Elektra, La fanciulla del West, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district, Kát’a Kabanová, Die Walküre, La Rondine, Cavalleria rusticana and La Dama di Picche at the San Carlo in Naples.
He was awarded the 2018 Abbiati Prize as best Conductor orchestra.
In 2020, he opened the season of the Comunale di Bologna with Tristan und Isolde. He resumed his post-Covid19 activities in the summer season of San Carlo in Naples, with Tosca and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The 2020/21 season continues with the orchestras Konzerthaus in Berlin, Philharmonia in London, Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Dallas and Pittsburgh Symphony, NDR Hamburg, Filarmonica della Scala and Rai Torino.

Orchestra del Teatro di San Carlo
The history of the Orchestra of the Teatro di San Carlo is closely linked to that of the oldest European opera house, which opened on the 4th of November 1737 with the Achilles in Skyros by Domenico Sarro. Since then, the prestigious tradition of the Orchestra of San Carlo continued throughout the nineteenth century, the period during which the complex was recipient of works composed by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi. Up until that time, San Carlo had entertained great soloists and guests, often foreigners. However, on the 18th of April 1884, the young Giuseppe Martucci stood on the podium to conduct the San Carlo ensemble in a rich program, with music by Weber, Saint-Saëns and Wagner. Since then, the Neapolitan composer has represented a constant and formative presence for the Orchestra. Subsequently, many are the names of the great directors at the helm of the Orchestra: Toscanini (1909), Victor de Sabata (1928), and even the composers Pizzetti and Mascagni. On the 8th of January 1934, Richard Strauss gave to the ensemble of the theatre a concert entirely composed from his own music. It is important to also note, with the testimony of a much strengthened cultural vivacity, the courage with which the orchestra presented the first performance of Francesca da Rimini by Riccardo Zandonai  (the 15th of January 1921) and Fedra by Ildebrando Pizzetti (the 16th of April 1924). After the Second World War and the following decade, Naples and San Carlo welcomed many other famous conductors: Gui, Serafin, Santini, Gavazzeni among the Italians, and Böhm, Fricsay, Scherchen, Cluytens, Knappertsbusch and Mitropoulos among the foreigners, including, in 1958, Igor Stravinsky. The sixties saw two emerging young directors on the podium: Claudio Abbado, who made his debut in 1963, and Riccardo Muti in 1967. Meanwhile, the complex of the The Theatre was appreciated even outside the country, thanks to a series of prestigious tours. The first Italian theater to go abroad after the Second World War, in 1946 San Carlo was at Covent Garden in London. In 1951, it was guest at the Festival of Strasbourg and took part in the Paris Opera at the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the death of Verdi. After the Festival of Nations in Paris, in 1956, and then a Edinburgh in 1963, San Carlo launched into a long tour of Brazil in 1969. It was in Budapest in 1973, in Dortmund in 1981, in Wiesbaden in 1983, 1985 and 1987; finally, with Flaminio by Pergolesi, in the United States at Charleston and New York. In the Eighties, the Orchestra found in Daniel Oren a regular point of reference. In the next decade, inaugurated by the intense collaboration with Salvatore Accardo, there was a decided revival of symphonic activity, evidenced by collaborations with renowned directors, including Giuseppe Sinopoli. In the wake of these prestigious rewards, the Symphonic Orchestra of San Carlo found at its side many other famous stage director, such as Georges Prêtre, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gary Bertini (music director in 2004-2005), Jansug Kakhidze, Jeffrey Tate (who from 2005 until 2010 was music director of the theater), Gustav Kuhn and Gabriele Ferro (from 1999 until July 2004 at the helm of the Orchestra). Gabriele Ferro, in September 2001, conductes the San Carlo Orchestra in Stravinsky’s Perséphone-Edipus Rex in the ancient theater of Epidaurus, in Greece, with a great cast which included Gérard Depardieu and Isabella Rossellini. In June 2005, the Orchestra performed in the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Otsu, in two operas of Verdi, Luisa Miller and Il Trovatore, and in October 2005 it was in Pisa, with Cantate per San Gennaro (music revision by Roberto de Simone), host of the International Festival of Sacred Music “Anima Mundi”. Among the most recent tours were those in France and Chile (2010), in Russia at the Mariinsky Theatre (2011) and at the Hong Kong Arts Festival (2013 ) with La Traviata conducted by Roberto Abbado and directed by Ferzan Ozpetek.
The Orchestra has also significantly contributed to the conquest of the prestigious Abbiati Award given by Italian music critics in 2002 for Königskinder (“…Jeffrey Tate – we can read in the citation –has achieved in the Orchestra both chamber discipline and romantic impulse) and, in 2004, for Elektra.
Since October 2016 the Music Director is Juraj Valčuha.