Staatskapelle Weimar / BTF 2020

Mercadante: Emma d’Antiochia – ouverture

Rossini: Aureliano in Palmira – ouverture

Rossini: Semiramide – ouverture

Verdi: Jérusalem – ouverture

Verdi: Nabucco – ouverture

Liszt: Sardanapalo

Sardanapalo, King of Assyria: Airam Hernández 

Mirra, an Ionian slavegirl: Joyce El-Khoury

Beleso, a priest: Oleksandr Pushniak

Featuring: Female Choir of the Hungarian National Choir (choirmaster: Csaba Somos)

Conductor: Giampaolo Bisanti

 130 years after the death of a composer, rarely are such works discovered that substantially alter our view of the oeuvre. Ferenc Liszt was a unique composer in this regard as well: the surviving first act of the opera he based on Byron’s tragedy was first performed in Weimar in 2018.

The manuscript of the composition was found at Weimar’s Goethe and Schiller Archive, and David Trippett, a musicologist at the University of Cambridge, thinks the music of Sardanapalo is breath-taking. It reflects the influence of Bellini, Meyerbeer and Wagner, and it combines an Italian lyricism with Liszt’s unmistakably original harmonic vocabulary. Trippett reconstructed the piece from the manuscript, and also wrote an orchestration for it, and this is the version that will be performed in Budapest.

In the first half of the concert, overtures written by Italian composers during the decades preceding Sardanapalo, including both popular and seldom played pieces, will be performed.

This performance of the Budapest Spring Festival is presented by Müpa Budapest.