Founded in 2005 by the famous Italian soprano Denia Mazzola Gavazzeni to promote musical works, especially those of often forgotten composers, and to organize operatic concerts for the benefit of the sick or underprivileged, the Association Ab Harmoniae Onlus can boast more than one hundred and fifty concerts as well as a significant number of conferences or musical gatherings. This success led its supporters to create a similar movement in Nice last year and in Monaco in 2009. Among its various projects is the creation of an Institute of Advanced Technological Studies for the teaching of Italian singing.
In order to celebrate the centenary of the birth of her husband, the great composer and conductor Gianandrea Gavazzeni – thirteen openings at La Scala, where he notably directed Maria Callas in 1957 –, Denia Mazzola Gavazzeni took the initiative, on Saturday, December 12, at the Nice Opera, to hold a “Lyrical Solidarity Gala.” In the presence of local and Italian political figures, including Madame Sartirani, representative of the Bergamo Town Hall, the composer’s hometown and a sister city to Nice, the heads of several institutions in Nice, including the CHU de l’Archet, the Nice Prison, the Lenval Foundation, the Basilica of Notre-Dame, and the Pauliani Foundation received commemorative medals from the hands of the singer as well as an official commitment for lyrical concerts within their respective establishments.
Composed of two parts, the program of “great airs and famous opera duets” was animated by a host of artists: Denia Mazzola Gavazzeni herself sang “Vissi d’arte” from Tosca and, in a duet with baritone Franck Ferrari, freshly lauded for his role as Ourrias in Charles Gounod’s Mireille at the Garnier Opera, an excerpt from Donizetti’s “Lucia Di Lammermoor.” A composer also born in Bergamo, who became the favorite repertoire of Gianandrea. Two magnificent voices combined with an intense capacity for dramatic interpretation, all while it was a concert version. Unfortunately, the mezzo-soprano Laura Brioli massacred “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah: a dreadful vocal mess where Samson became a famous Korean brand of high-tech products!
Instead, let us highlight the pleasure of discovering two particularly promising voices: that of the young soprano Caterina Borruso in her “Je veux vivre” from Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. A voice already very beautiful, powerfully evolving, and high notes she reaches with vocal runs that are still cautious but impress with their clear and pleasant timbre. The bass Emidio Guidotti also carved a definite success in his interpretation of “Ella Giammai m’amo” from Verdi’s Don Carlo. Deep, yet rich and melodious lows, and a warm voice that successfully conveys, with undeniable talent, both the majestic solitude of a king and the tragic despair of a man.
A musically very successful evening with, under the exemplary baton of maestro Sergio Monterisi, who seems particularly at ease in this repertoire, the magnificent Overture to “La Forza del Destino” by Verdi, or the excerpt from the more romantic work of Pietro Mascagni “Guglielmo Ratcliff,” in fact, a work inspired by the German poet Heinrich Heine. A direction that also revived the spirit of the deceased composer by playing for the first time an “Interludo per una voce femminile,” an excerpt from an Oratorio dedicated to San Alessandro, the Patron Saint of Bergamo. A very inspired maestro in harmony with a Philharmonie de Nice evidently convinced by this charitable contribution in favor of great human causes.
