director James Conlon

La Scala Philharmonic

production Spoleto56 Festival dei 2Mondi

The activities of the La Scala Philharmonic are supported from Unicredit.

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program

Richard Wagner

Rienzi, the last of the tribunes, Overture

Giuseppe Verdi

The Masnadiers, Overture

Richard Wagner

The Phantom Vessel, Overture
first cello Sandro Laffranchini

Giuseppe Verdi

Luisa Miller, Overture

Richard Wagner

Tannhäuser, Overture

Giuseppe Verdi

The Sicilian Vespers, Overture

Richard Wagner

Lohengrin, Act I Overture and Act III Overture

Giuseppe Verdi

The Force of Destiny, Overture

Verdi and Wagner were born in the same year, but they never met and never wrote or sought each other out. They were brilliant composers and were both distinguished by the revolutionary spirit that animated them, not only from the point of view of artistic innovation, but also as protagonists in the social and political events of their era. On the bicentennial of their birth, the Festival dedicates the final concert to these two monuments of 19th-century music and culture.

JAMES CONLON

Internationally recognized as one of the leading conductors on the contemporary scene, James Conlon, over the course of his career, has conducted in almost all of North America and in all European music capitals. He is Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera, the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Cincinnati May Festival, the oldest choral music festival in the United States. He was Principal Conductor of theOpera National de Paris (1995-2004) for longer than any other conductor, General Music Director of the City of Cologne in Germany (1989-2002), also holding the positions of Music Director of the Gürzenich Orchestra andOpera in Cologne. He was also Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1983-1991). Since his debut in 1976, he has conducted more than 250 performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Known for his interpretations of Wagner's repertoire since beginning his tenure in 2006 at the Los Angeles Opera, he has sought to establish a Wagnerian tradition to Los Angeles. In five years he has conducted seven Wagner operas, including the Ring cycle. For one month, the Ring Festival was held throughout the city, with the collaboration of 125 cultural institutions. In June 2010 he conducted three Ring cycles at the Los Angeles Opera. This series will follow up on Wagner's bicentennial in 2013 and will continue into the future. Conlon is currently conducting a to Benjamin Britten tribute over three years, culminating in November 2013 on the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth with a concert of the War Requiem and a similar Britten Festival to that of Wagner. A longtime devotee from of Britten's music, he will conduct some of his works in the United States and Europe in upcoming seasons, including, The Turn of the Screw, Albert Herring, Morte to Venice and The rape of Lucretia at the Los Angeles Opera, and to Midsummer Night's Dream at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome. The tribute includes symphonic and choral works with the NDR Sinfonie Orchester in Hamburg, with the Orchestre National de France to Paris, with the Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, La Scala Philharmonic, and Symphonic Montreal. With the aim of disseminating the works of composers suppressed by the Nazi regime, he devoted himself to programming their music in North America and Europe: at the Ravinia Festival with the Breaking the Silence series and at the Los Angeles Opera with Recovered Voices. For his efforts in bringing the music of these composers to international attention, he received the Crystal Globe award from the Anti-defamation League (ADL) and the Zemlisky Prize. He is also the founder and Artistic Advisor of the Orel Foundation, an organization dedicated to to highlighting and to representing the works of these composers. He has recorded for major record companies and received numerous awards. He has appeared in several television series and at the Metropolitan Opera in performances presented on DVD. Most recently he presented together Zemlisky's Der Zweg , Ullmann's Der zerbrochene Krug and Braunfels' Die Vögel, recorded on DVD. He received two Grammy Awards (best Classical Recording and Best Opera Album) for Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a Los Angeles production Opera, released on DVD. He was appointed Officier de l'Ordre des Arts e des Lettres by the French government in 1996 and in 2004 promoted to Commander. In 2002 he received France's highest award from the President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac, the Legion of Honor. For Festival dei Due Mondi in 2009 he conducted Gianni Schicchi directed by Woody Allen, in 2011 he conducted the Final Concert at Piazza Duomo, in 2012 the Concert at Teatro Caio Melisso Spazio Carla Fendi with music by Franz Schreker, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

SCALA PHILHARMONIC

Claudio Abbado founded the Filarmonica della Scala together with La Scala musicians in 1982 with the aim of developing the symphonic repertoire in the context of the theater's great operatic tradition. The following year the Philharmonic was established as an independent association. Carlo Maria Giulini conducts more than 90 concerts and leads the orchestra on its first international tours; Riccardo Muti, Principal Conductor from 1987 to 2005, promotes its artistic growth and makes it a constant guest in the most prestigious international from concert halls. The orchestra establishes collaborative relationships with major conductors: Georges Prêtre, Lorin Maazel and Wolfgang Sawallisch have been present since the first seasons and are welcomed by the orchestra as Honorary Members along with to Valery Gergiev, but the contributions of Leonard Bernstein, Semyon Bychkov, Myung-Whun Chung, James Conlon, Dennis Russell Davies should be mentioned, Gustavo Dudamel, Tan Dun, Peter Eötvös, Christoph Eschenbach, John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Jordan, Zubin Mehta, Gianandrea Noseda, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, Gennadij Rozdestvenskij, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Yuri Temirkanov, Robin Ticciati, and Franz Welser-Möst. Since 2006, the Philharmonic has intensified its collaboration with Teatro alla Scala Music Director Daniel Barenboim and with Riccardo Chailly, Daniel Harding, Daniele Gatti, and Valery Gergiev.
The Philharmonic carries out its own independent concert season and the theater's symphonic season under agreements sanctioned from a convention with Teatro alla Scala. It is also engaged in numerous tours, which, with more than 500 concerts outside the foundation, have made it the Italian musical institution with the greatest presence abroad in the past decade. Recent seasons include debuts in the United States with Riccardo Chailly in 2007 and in China with Myung-Whun Chung in 2008, a year that also marked its return to Vienna's Musikverein with Daniele Gatti. In 2009 the Philharmonic debuts at the Berlin Philharmonie with Daniel Barenboim and returns to Paris with Pierre Boulez and Maurizio Pollini. 2010 engagements include a return to Asia with Semyon Bychkov for the Shanghai Expo; in 2011 the Philharmonic is in several European countries with Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Daniel Harding, Gianandrea Noseda and Georges Prêtre. In 2012 he is with Daniel Barenboim to Paris, Berlin and Frankfurt; with Daniel Harding to Prague, Linz, Stuttgart, Dresden and Bonn; with Gergiev at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg; and with Fabio Luisi to St. Petersburg and Baden-Baden.

The La Scala Philharmonic has commissioned new compositions to Giorgio Battistelli, Carlo Boccadoro, Azio Corghi, Luis de Pablo, Pascal Dusapin, Peter Eötvös, Ivan Fedele, Matteo Franceschini, Luca Francesconi, Salvatore Sciarrino, Giovanni Sollima and Fabio Vacchi.

Committed to the dissemination of music to the younger generation, the orchestra opens the rehearsals of all the season's concerts to schools, and with the "Sound, Music!" initiative it is targeting elementary school children with a project. It is alongside the main scientific institutions and voluntary associations in the city of Milan, for which it performs dedicated concerts and the open rehearsals of the "La filarmonica della scala incontra la città" cycle. It is regularly engaged for the MITO festival in concerts that have brought a very large audience closer to symphonic music.

The Philharmonic has made a substantial record production for Decca, Sony and Emi: on the occasion of Verdi's bicentennial, it recorded with Riccardo Chailly the CD Viva Verdi released in November 2012 (Decca). The concerts are regularly broadcast on deferred television by Rai, live on radio from Radio3 and on medici.tv. Since 2012, some of the concerts have also been broadcast live in high definition in more than 200 cinemas around the world. The activities of the La Scala Philharmonic do not draw on to public funds and are supported from UniCredit, the Orchestra's institutional Main Partner.

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