Michele Mariotti: Stabat Mater/Pulcinella

Michele Mariotti conducts the Orchestra of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in two works very distant from each other in time: the Stabat Mater by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and Pulcinella by Igor Stravinskij, ballet in one act for small orchestra with three solo voices to music by Pergolesi.

The Stabat Mater was commissioned to Pergolesi probably in 1734, by the secular Neapolitan brotherhood of the Knights of the Virgin of Sorrows of San Luigi al Palazzo, to officiate at the liturgy of Holy Week. replacing the previous version by Alessandro Scarlatti, commissioned by the brotherhood about twenty years earlier. Tradition has it that the work was written in the last weeks of the composer's life and completed on the same day of his death in 1736. The composition, built on twelve numbers - which symbolically describe the twenty stanzas of Christ's passion - is centered on the pathos of the sacred text.

The “Ballet avec chant” Pulcinella, composed by Igor Stravinskij between 1919 and 1920 with music by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, represents the first important work of the author's neoclassical period. with this ballet, in fact, Stravinsky begins to abandon the inspiring principle of the Russian popular tradition, instead placing forms or materials drawn directly from the past at the centre of his writing.

Among the main performers we remember: Maria Grazia Schiavo (soprano), Aigul Akhmetshina (mezzo-soprano), Cameron Becker (tenor), Riccardo Fassi (bass).

Photo: Fabrizio Sansoni