+27 (0)21 487 3900 consolato.capetown@esteri.it

Belcanto: voice education at the service of the beauty of sound

Italian Organ and Soprano Concert

1 March at 17:30

St. Mary’s Cathedral | Cape Town

ProgrammeBook Seats

The Consulate of Italy in Cape Town 

cordially invite you to an Italian Organ and Soprano Concert.

“Belcanto: voice education at the service of the beauty of sound”

(Free entrance. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis)

First time in South Africa – Part One of the concert will be the world premiere of pieces recently recorded by Maria Ercolano and Olga Laudonia for the Novantiqua record label.

It is a recording project in which the musical pages retrace the story of the girl from Nazareth through Marian texts dedicated to different moments of the liturgical year: a sound circle whose pieces are taken from literature for music from the 19th and early 20th centuries (from the notes to the CD edited by O. Laudonia).

The second part of the programme is a tribute to Belcanto icon pieces from the opera, operetta and classical song repertoire: all “exquisitely” Italian and specially arranged for the occasion.

Programme

 

Part One

  • C. Franck (1822-1890): Ave Maria FWV 62 for organ and soprano
  • C. Saint-Saens (1835-1921): Ave Maria ICS 19 for organ and soprano
  • J.B. Faure (1830-1914): Sancta Maria for organ and soprano
  • M. Reger (1873-1916): Maria Wiegenlied op. 76 n. 52 for organ and soprano

 

Part Two

  • M.E. Bossi (1861-1925): Entrée pontifical op. 104 n. 1 for organ solo
  • G. Verdi (1813-1901): Ave Maria from Otello for organ and soprano
  • P. Mascagni (1863-1945): Ave Maria on Intermezzo da Cavalleria rusticana for organ and soprano
  • Padre Davide da Bergamo (1791-1863): Suonatina in Do per Offertorio e Postcommunio for organ solo
  • O. Laudonia (1981): Parafrasando Verdi for organ solo
  • F. Lehár (1870-1948): Tace il labbro from La vedova allegra for organ and soprano
  • C. Lombardo (1869-1959) – V. Ranzato (1882-1937): Luna tu non sai dirmi perché da Il Paese dei Campanelli for organ and soprano
  • E. De Curtis (1875-1937) – D. Furnò (1892-1983): Non ti scordar di me for organ and soprano

The concert will be followed by a reception

Free entrance. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Maria Ercolano

Maria Ercolano

Soprano

Graduated in Singing from the S. Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples under the guidance of Tina Quagliarella Marchetti, Maria Ercolano later specialized with Elizabeth Smith and Anna Gaggiotti. She also attained a specialization in Vocal Chamber Music.

He made his debut in Palermo in Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto (De Tomasi and Rizzi Brignoli), followed by Malipiero’s Il Capitan Spavento (Gregoretti/Molino), Menotti’s Medium (Menotti/Molino). With Roberto De Simone she began a fruitful collaboration that allowed her to range from baroque to modern repertoire (Cicinelli, Paisiello, Massenet, De Falla, Kurt Weill). She made her debut in I Pagliacci at the Teatro Brancaccio in Rome following her victory of first prize in the Concorso Internazionale Città di Roma.

Her meeting with Antonio Florio led to a ten-year collaboration that took her to the most important Italian and foreign stages as a guest of national and international festivals and opera/concert seasons (San Carlo, La Scala, Petruzzelli, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Champs Elysees, Zarzuela, Konzerthaus, Berliner Philarmoniker, Accademia S. Cecilia, Chigiana, Ravello Festival etc). The protagonist above all of roles “en travesti” of the great repertoire of the Neapolitan School (Provenzale, Vinci, Leo, Piccinni, Jommelli, Di Majo, Pergolesi), he has recorded for Opus 111, Naive, Bongiovanni, Dynamic winning critical awards (Diapason d’oro); she also has to his credit numerous live recordings for radio and television broadcasters (Rai, Radio3, Radio France, Mezzo, Bayern Rundfunk). Her particular versatility in tackling varied roles and repertoires sees her as the protagonist of monographic projects dedicated to authors such as, for example, Poulenc (La Voix Humaine, directed by Corsicato) and then Gershwin, De Falla, Turina, Obradors, Ravel, Rossini,Tosti, Denza, Schumann and Schubert.

From an early age he showed particular inclination for teaching singing, an activity he still practices with considerable success.

Olga Laudonia

Olga Laudonia

Organ

Organist and musicologist, Olga Laudonia is a professor of History of Music at the Cosenza Conservatory of Music. A student of Vincenzo De Gregorio, Wijnand van de Pol and Roberto Marini, she has completed her musical studies at the Conservatories of Naples and Perugia, where she earned no less than five diplomas, and at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, where she obtained, with highest honors, the Post-Master’s Specialized Course in Organ.

For about twenty years she has been performing as a solist in Italy and abroad in prestigious venues such as: Catedral de Malaga, Catedral de Cadiz, Sala Scarlatti in Naples, Academic Hall of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, Real Basílica de Nossa Senhora e de Santo António in Mafra (where she gave a concert for six organs as part of the Festival Internacional de Órgão).

She graduated with a degree in Modern Literature from the University of Naples Federico II, she earned at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome her PhD in Applied Musicology (summa cum laude). She is member of the Scientific Committee of the Quaderni del Conservatorio di Cagliari and Coordinator of the Cosenza Conservatory Magazine.

As executive editor of the series Unpublished Naples for the publishing house PVH (Switzerland), she has edited more than forty critical editions of unpublished works from the Neapolitan school. She has published, as author of essays, monographs, prefaces, editorships and reviews, for: Di Mauro, Momenti, GDE, Ledizioni, Armelin, Turchini Edizioni, Associazione culturale Giuseppe Serassi Institute for Musicological Research, Accademia Organistica Campana and Società italiana di Musicologia.

Book your seats

Kindly fill in the form below to book your seats.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Entrance is free and seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. To ensure you can find seats please be there early.


The Venue

St. Mary Cathedral | Gardens, Cape Town

Date

1 March 2023

 

Time

17:30 for 18:00

Venue

St. Mary Cathedral

16 Roeland Street
Cape Town