Welcome back at Maggio!
After the announcement of the new schedule till the end of the year, the new season of the Teatro del Maggio begins on Wednesday, September 13th, at 8pm with a joyful concert, based entirely on Mozart’s compositions and offered to the audience with special ticket prices.

On the podium of the Main Hall, the conductor emeritus Zubin Mehta at the head of the Maggio Orchestra and Choir

Florence, September 8th, 2023 – The season of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino finally begins, with the concert Welcome to the Maggio!, which inaugurates the programming from September to the end of the year. At the helm of the Maggio Orchestra and Choir, on the podium of the Main Hall – on Wednesday, September 13th, at 8pm – the lifetime conductor emeritus Zubin Mehta, will offer the audience a joyful, lively, but also solemn all-Mozartian programme, with the performance of the overture to Le nozze di Figaro, of the Symphony in D major K. 385, known as Haffner and the Krönungsmesse (Coronation Mass) in C major K. 317 for soloists, choir and orchestra. The master of the Coro del Maggio is Lorenzo Fratini.

In the poster, therefore, a program entirely dedicated to the compositions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, of which maestro Mehta is one of the most expert and authoritative interpreters in the world: the overture of Le nozze di Figaro, the first of the three famous works written by genius of Salzburg in collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte, opens the show: composed between the autumn of 1785 and the spring of 1786, the opera debuted at the Burgtheater in Vienna on May 1st, 1786, immediately obtaining an outstanding success.
Then follows the Symphony in D major K. 385, known as the Haffner: this name is due to the circumstances that saw its birth. In the summer of 1782 Mozart, busy with the staging of Entführung aus dem Serail was called from Salzburg to compose what was supposed to be a serenade. The invitation came from Sigmund Haffner who, in the past, when he held the position of burgomaster of the city, had already commissioned a serenade from Mozart (K. 250) on the occasion of his daughter’s wedding. The cordial relations between the two families led the composer, despite his commitments, to write this new composition, performed for the first time at the Burgtheater in March 1783.
The concert closes with another of Mozart’s most famous compositions, the Krönungsmesse (Coronation Mass) in C major K. 317 for soloists, choir and orchestra, written between the end of 1778 and the dawn of 1779, following a an eventful period for Mozart where he traveled between the cities of Munich, Augsburg, Mannheim and Paris before finally returning to his native Salzburg. Despite what was believed until the beginning of the 20th century – that the mass had been composed to celebrate the anniversary of the coronation of an image of the Virgin venerated in the Maria Plain basilica in Salzburg – this was instead probably composed for the Cathedral of Salzburg where it was performed on Easter Sunday of 4 April 1779. It was then proposed in 1792, in Frankfurt am Main, on the occasion of the celebrations for the coronation of Francis II as Emperor: however, it took the nickname of Krönungsmesse only in the early years of the 19th century, at the imperial court in Vienna, where it was often used in solemn religious services.

During the performance of the Krönungsmesse, the solo voices are those of four talents from the Accademia del Maggio: Rosalia Cid, one of the protagonists of the Falstaff staged during the 85th Festival del Maggio; Xenia Tziouvaras, Lorenzo Martelli and Lodovico Filippo Ravizza, all three of the protagonists of Carmen, also directed by maestro Mehta, staged on March 2023.