Music. An exceptional concert is organized by the Fugue à l’opéra association, as a prelude to the Saint John 2024 festivities and in close collaboration with the Grand Pardon association. The famous Stabat Mater by Pergolesi will be preceded by a divertimento in D major by Mozart. The show will take place on Sunday June 23 at 5:30 p.m.
“Since the last Grand Pardon of 2018, we have collaborated every year with the Grand Pardon association to celebrate Saint-Jean. This year, they gave me carte blanche and I thought of this show which I had heard about because it had already been performed in Morocco, in Rabat and of which I knew one of the performers,” explains Marie Henry, president of Fugue at the Opera.
The quintet of the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra will perform this work that Mozart composed at the age of sixteen, a youthful work for this already seasoned and famous musician, a light production which will prepare the public for a Stabat Mater rich in emotions. Two singers will then join the orchestra: Johanne Cassar who has already come to sing at Chaumont in 2019 and Elodie Salmon.
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In the 18th century, these roles were held by castrati because women were not allowed to perform this liturgical music in the nave of churches. And yet it is a song that expresses the pain of a woman, of a mother who cries for her son! The work is all the more moving because it was composed by Pergolesi in a convent near Naples where he had taken refuge, suffering from tuberculosis. He died shortly after, at the age of twenty-six!
“I have a lot of pleasure in developing a program,” confides Marie Henry, “and I strive to strike a balance between artistic demands and our primary objective of popularizing this type of music.” For almost twenty years the association has been organizing very varied events, all of which have been successful. The task is made easier by all the partnerships she has been able to forge locally with other associations and with the Nouveau Relax which hosts several of her shows.
From our correspondent Françoise Ramillon
