Daniele Gatti

A curse declaimed by a deep bass voice: "there will be neither dew nor rain in the next years". Elijah opens with a terrible prophecy of shocking effect. Commissioned by the Birmingham Festival, it is undoubtedly the highest achievement of the nineteenth century oratory, a genre brought to its peak by Georg Friedrich Handel and Joseph Haydn and reread by Felix Mendelssohn with dramatic and theatrical romanticism. The ultimate masterpiece of the composer, was triumphantly premiered on 26 August 1846, few months before Mendelssohn's death at thirty-eight.

Sung in German.

Program

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Elijah, oratorio op. 70 for soloists, choir and orchestra

Artists

Conductor
Daniele Gatti

Choir director
Lorenzo Fratini

Orchestra and Choir of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Soprano
Genia Kühmeier

Mezzo
Sara Mingardo

Tenor
Rainer Trost

Bass
Peter Mattei

DANIELE GATTI

Born in Milan in 1961, here he graduated in conservatory Giuseppe Verdi. Among the many positions held are those of Chief Conductor of the Zurich Opera ( 2009-12 ), musical director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (1997-2007 ), and Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Opera House in London ( 1994-97 ). It is among the few Italian directors invited to the Bayreuther Festspiele, where he inaugurated the 2008 edition with a new production of Parsifal. After Elektra in 2010, he returns to Salzburg Festival in 2012 to conduct La Bohème. In the same year, with the Wiener Philharmoniker, conducts the entire cycle of the Brahms symphonies in Vienna and in a European tour. He opened the season at the Teatro alla Scala in 2008 with Don Carlo and La Traviata in 2013 . Since 2008 he is Music Director of the Orchestre National de France and, since 2009 Conductor Laureate of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, after having been their Music Director since 1996.