Outstanding works by great composers to perform at Astana Opera’s Grand Hall

Outstanding works by two great composers – Verdi’s Stabat Mater and Puccini’s Messa di Gloria – will be performed on February 18 at Astana Opera’s Grand Hall. World classical masterpieces will be presented by the opera house’s soloists, choir and symphony orchestra under the baton of Astana Opera’s principal choirmaster, Honored Worker of Kazakhstan Yerzhan Dautov, El.kz cites astanaopera.kz.

The concert will also feature tenor Merei Kadyrkhanov, baritone Ayan Tolegen and the student choir of the Kazakh National University of Arts, led by artistic director Batyrzhan Smakov and choirmaster Marina Bukhvalova. There is no doubt that the performers will give the audience true musical pleasure.

Stabat Mater, the work that completed the creative path of Giuseppe Verdi, traditionally astounds listeners with its deep spiritual power and emotional experiences of the author, forcing them to immerse themselves in an atmosphere of light and hope. It combines drama and spiritual depth, expressed in harmony and virtuosity of musical forms. Many features of the Stabat Materstyle make it similar to the operatic style of Verdi, and the choral performance gives the work a special majesty.

It is important to note that the Astana Opera Choir skillfully performs such works, because it is the winner of many prestigious international awards, including a gold medal received at the 11th Chinese International Choir Festival. Recently, the team added another high award into its treasury, taking first place at the Hajnówka International Competition, held in the city of Białystok (Poland). The singers not only performed brilliantly at the competition, gaining a victory, but also gave a large recital of music by Kazakh composers as part of the tour.

Giacomo Puccini’s Messa di Gloria is another masterpiece that will be performed in the program of the musical evening. This is a rarely performed work; henceforth, many classical music connoisseurs strive to listen to it as soon as they see this title on the playbill. According to Giacomo Puccini himself, his brainchild was specifically named not just “Messa”, but rather “Messa di Gloria”, due to the fact that it is more glorifying than liturgical in nature – this is what explains its “secularism”. Each part of the composition, starting from Kyrie and ending with Agnus Dei, sounds very harmonious.

Let us remember that the Messa di Gloria was first performed on July 12, 1880, gaining enormous success with the audience. The composer’s fellow students believed that a new direction had been opened in Italian music - “la musica puccinistica”. Messa di Gloria largely determined the composer’s further creative style, and some of its fragments were later used in his operas Manon Lescaut, Tosca (cantata “Inno di Gloria”), Edgar, and even in Madama Butterfly.

This concert will be a brilliant musical event that will immerse the audience in the exciting world of majestic classics. Astana Opera continues to assert its reputation as a cultural center, offering listeners magnificent works of art in highly professional performance.

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