This concert is a multicultural celebration of one of the most flamboyant figures of 19th century music, a true co-operation between the Co-ordinating Italian Committee and the Hungarian Club of South Australia. This year we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt (1811-1886).
Described as ‘a genius with a touch of the charlatan’, Liszt thrilled audiences with his dazzling showmanship at the keyboard and prodigious performances in the boudoir. Men admired him and women swooned at his recitals.
Over the years though, his compositions have received mixed receptions from critics and academics alike. However, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, his accomplishments as a composer are set to be re-evaluated.
Liszt was Hungarian by birth but cosmopolitan by nature, an early precursor of the rock mega star today. (Small wonder that Ken Russell chose The Who’s Roger Daltrey to play Liszt in his outrageous 1975 film Lisztomania!)
In his day, Liszt made many transcriptions of opera, song and other composers’ works, all to the delight of his fans who did not always have money or access to attend performances of those works in their original forms by orchestras or in opera houses.
This is one of the few instances on which Liszt’s piano transcriptions will be heard alongside some of the actual music on which they were based. For example we hear the Rigoletto paraphrase placed alongside the actual quartet from Verdi’s Rigoletto, one of the most famous and most beloved pieces of all opera.
We will also hear rarities such as a Petrarch sonnet No.104 Pace non trovo sung and played, the aria Nessun maggior dolore from Rossini’s Otello as well as favourites from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Verdi’s Il Trovatore.
This event promises to be a highly stimulating concert featuring a quartet of singers from South Australia’s own Co-Opera and pianist Michael Ierace who returns to his hometown Adelaide, direct from London. While these artists tell the story in music, narrator Eugene Ragghianti will connect the pieces with stories and anecdotes about Liszt’s notoriously colourful and at times utterly scandalous life.
When: Sunday 4 December 2011 5.30pm
Where: Hungarian Club, 82 Osmond Terrace
Cost: $30 Adult and $20 Conc./Senior/Pensioner/Student
Bar facilities open and complimentary Hungarian nibbles on arrival
For more information visit www.carnevale-adelaide.com
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