Programs & Notes

The Concert celebrating the Republic Day opens with the Mameli Anthem, also known as “The Song of the Italians”. The text was written in Genoa on 10 September 1847 by the young patriot Goffredo Mameli, the music on 24 November of the same year in Turin by Michele Novaro. The first performance, according to accredited sources, took place on 10 December 1847 in front of the Oregina Sanctuary in Genoa, but was banned by the police. The following year, in the midst of the Risorgimento, it was played by military bands and sung by soldiers leaving for Lombardy, the scene of the first war of independence. After the unification of Italy, given its connection with the revolutionary phase of the Risorgimento, it was set aside and the Royal March written a few decades earlier by Giuseppe Gabetti from Turin was kept as the national anthem. But already in 1862 Giuseppe Verdi contributed to the popularity of Mameli’s Hymn, citing it, together with the Marseillaise and “God save the Queen” in his “Hymn of the Nations”. For reasons of political expediency, the Royal March remained the Italian anthem during fascism and only on 12 October 1946 did the Council of Ministers decide to adopt it “provisionally” as the national anthem. There was also a prolonged debate between those who would have preferred “La canzone del Piave” or the chorus “Va’ pensiero”, but Mameli’s Hymn continued its “provisional” function as the national anthem. The President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi stated that Mameli’s anthem is “a song of freedom of a people who, united, rise again after centuries of divisions and humiliations”. In 2017, Law no. 181 of 4 December recognized that the words of Mameli and the notes of Novaro represented the national anthem of Italy. The fact that he is remembered with the name of the poet and not of the musician is explained by the greater popularity of Mameli and by the heroic circumstance of his death, which occurred at only twenty-one years of age on 6 July 1849, while fighting to defend the Republic of Rome. Michele Novaro, on the other hand, a man of great humility, did not take advantage of the popularity of his music and died in 1864 in poverty and almost forgotten by all. The other pieces belong to the operatic repertoire: we begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with the dramatic overture of Don Giovanni, the aria of Donna Anna (Non mi dir bell’idol mio) taken from the second act and the first aria of the Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute, in which Astrifiammante (that is the name of the Queen of the Night) asks Tamino to save her daughter Pamina who was supposedly kidnapped by Sarastro. The central section is occupied by four protagonists of Italian melodrama, Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi and Pietro Mascagni (whose poignant Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana will be performed) and will end with the “valse-ariette” Je veux vivre dans ce rêve from the first act of the opera Romeo et Juliette by Charles Gounod with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. This is a page full of technically very difficult vocal effects, such as trills and the roulade (warble).