Thu, 11. 2. 2016, 7:00 p.m.

B4 - SHAKESPEARE INSPIRATIONS

Venue: Zlín Congress Centre  |  Organizer: Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinů, o.p.s.  | 

In 2016 we mark the 400th anniversary of the death of the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. For a number of reasons his work has appealed to composers of different periods who have frequently drawn inspiration from it. Felix Mendelssohn wrote the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, depicting the events of a magical summer's night, at the tender age of 16, and subsequently went to to compose the incidental music for the play. Romeo and Juliet, a romantic tragedy, is one of the best known love stories that Vincenzo Bellini transformed into opera, but he was not alone in this endeavour, since this theme was also taken up by Charles Gounod and Tchaikovsky. Similarly Tchaikovsky drew on the tragedy Hamlet to write an overture-fantasia and incidental music, and Ambroise Thomas also wrote an opera based on Hamlet in 1868. Hector Berlioz's overture King Lear was written after he won the Rome Prize which enabled him to travel to Italy, and the composer based a number of further compositions on the works of Shakespeare. The Italian conductor Walter Attanasi conducts opera at many leading opera houses, not to mention symphonic orchestras the world over, but he has an equally good musical affinity with popular music and jazz. The young soprano Christina Johnston graduated from London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is currently guesting at the Prague National Theatre.