Organization

Festival Pergolesi Spontini

Conductor

Ottavio Dantone

Stage director

Ignacio García

Set designer

Zulima Memba del Olmo

Costume designer

Patricia Toffolutti

Lighting designer

Fabrizio Gobbi

Singer

Soprano

Monica Bacelli

Livietta

Baritone

Carlo Lepore

Tracollo

Italian

Livietta e Tracollo -  ("Livietta and Tracollo")

Jesi

Italy

Teatro Pergolesi

Iesi

On the occasion of the 300th birthday of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736), the "Italian Mozart", whose music is practically unknown today, the Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini, which for years has been dedicated to researching and performing Pergolesi's music, in collaboration with UNITEL CLASSICA recorded all eight of the master's stage works on video. A groundbreaking project that will provide many impetus for the rediscovery of this composer's epoch-making works.

A total of four operas and two intermezzi will be recorded under the video direction of Tiziano Macini (who also directed the multiple award-winning recording of Wagner's "Ring" in Valencia). The venue is the Pergolesi Festival in Jesi, the composer's hometown, near Ancona. The majority of the works will be performed by the Accademia Bizantina, one of the top ensembles specializing in the historical performance practice of Italian music of the 17th and 18th centuries, playing on historical instruments. At the head of the ensemble is the longstanding musical director, the internationally renowned conductor, harpsichordist and organist Ottavio Dantone.

Music lovers who are only familiar with Pergolesi's better-known works such as the "Stabat mater" and "La serva padrona" will enjoy these comic and dramatic operas and humorous intermezzi that anticipate the works of Mozart and Rossini. Under the title "Pergolesi - Genius Rediscovered" the Italian La Stampa wrote: "Music that is theatre, theater that lives through music - they [the musicians] know that the two halves of opera are inseparable" - words that refer to all of Pergolesi's stage works presented here apply!

Photos