Postcard from Venice
Barcarolles, carnival masks and the bustling Piazza San Marco – Venice has been a favourite tourist destination since the days of The Grand Tour. But La Serenissima has its darker side too, when mist shrouds the city or when the sirocco blows in from the Sahara. Climb into a gondola on our musical tour of the city.
Read more…Venice was home to many important composers from Giovanni Gabrieli, writing for St Mark's Basilica, to Barbara Strozzi, whose compositions are being rediscovered each year, and Monteverdi, the creator of opera as an art form, whose controversial 'L'incoronazione di Poppea' was premiered during the Venetian carnival of 1643.
The composer most associated with the city is undoubtedly Antonio Vivaldi, dubbed “The Red Priest” on account of his flame-coloured hair, who composed for the girls in the Ospedale della Pietà. He's most famous for his Four Seasons, but listen here to two of his other great concertos, including the nightmarish “La notte” which has movements entitled Ghosts and Dreams.
Key operas premiered in Venice are included in this playlist, such as Verdi’s 'La traviata' and 'Rigoletto' and Rossini’s 'Semiramide', all of which had their first performances at the city’s gem of an opera house, La Fenice. There are several operas located in Venice too, so we join the crowds watching the gondola races in 'I due Foscari', cavort in The Dance of the Hours from 'La gioconda' and rock in the gentle Barcarolle from 'The Tales of Hoffmann'.
Barcarolles – the gentle song traditionally sung by gondoliers – were often composed as piano solos by composers in the 19th century. Gabriel Fauré wrote thirteen of them, but others were composed by Chopin and Rachmaninoff.
Thomas Mann’s novella 'Death in Venice' is represented at the end of our listening – Britten's opera and the last movement from his final string quartet – along with the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony which featured so hauntingly in the soundtrack to Visconti’s 1971 film, starring Dirk Bogarde.
[Due to geo-blocking restrictions, some tracks might be unavailable in certain territories.]