It will take place Thursday 20 June, at 6pm at Villa Mimbelli (via San Jacopo in Acquaviva 61) the Final concert which concludes the Mascagni Academy 2024, the department of the Goldoni Theater Foundation of Livorno which, with the contribution of the Friends of the Goldoni Theater Association, aims to increase young singers’ knowledge of Mascagna’s repertoire and of his contemporary authors. The initiative, ad Free admissionwill allow you to know and listen to the young singers from all over the world (Belarus, Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland), who are currently undertaking a complex training course at the Goldoni Theater with qualified teachers, each specialized in a particular aspect of the multifaceted artistic world that distinguishes opera singing: the psychologist Vanessa Candela, the musicologist Fulvio Venturi, the vocologist and mezzo-soprano Laura Brioli, the director Syria Colella, the conductor and master of the orchestra at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan Paolo Spadaro, the conductor Marcello Mottadelli, the manager of the artistic programming of the Royal Opera Muscat Raffaella Murdolo; the final act was the masterclass in technique and vocal interpretation by the baritone Massimo Cavalletti, an artist and performer of international level: “I am lucky enough to work with a large group of young people from all over the world – he declares – who have come to Livorno to try to learn and improve singing the realist repertoire and in particular the works of Mascagni. I believe it is important to give these kids an imprint that starts first of all from the voice, but also from the pronunciation and importance of the word which is fundamental in Mascagna’s opera and I am trying to do a job with them that goes from technique above all towards the interpretation of these fantastic pages and I believe I have at my disposal truly very important human material, not only of Italians but also of all the foreigners who have come here from China.
All the students, to whom the artistic director of the Mascagni Festival Marco Voleri will give the certificate of participation at the end of the concert, were selected through auditions which took place at the prestigious LAC Arte e Cultura in Lugano in Switzerland, the Plovdiv Opera (Bulgaria), the National Opera and Ballet Theater of Tirana (Albania) and recently at the Goldoni: “We are in the fourth edition of our Academy – states Voleri – we started on the wave of the “zero” edition of the Mascagni Festival with the enthusiasm to create something structured and important linked to the name of the greatest composer from Livorno, aware of how challenging if not arduous it was to address new generations of singers and ask them to specialize in a vocal style and in an opera theater like the one in Mascagna , fascinating, at times impetuous, but far from simple and not so frequently performed today. Well, what I have found in many Italian and foreign institutions is instead a strong desire and motivation to know and study his works and the numbers of this edition confirm this: 31 final selections, half of which come from abroad out of over 90 questions submitted. It is not just a matter of theoretical study: for the most deserving, there will be the possibility of performing in shows and concerts in Italy and abroad within the fifth edition of the Mascagni Festival which we will inaugurate in Livorno on a special occasion such as that of the 2nd August, the day on which Mascagni’s death is remembered.”
The concert program will feature arias and duets taken from the most famous works of the opera repertoire: beyond Mascagnipieces taken from the works of will be performed Puccini, Leoncavallo, Giordano, Verdi; at the piano Gianni Cigna, Anna Cognetta and Massimo Salotti.
At the end of the concert, the Monterotondo APS Chapel Association will award a special “Bellincioni-Stagno” Award and commemorative plaque to the Mascagni Academy student deemed most deserving by the Commission with the consequent opportunity to be the protagonist in one of the events of the Mascagni Festival.
