Il Natale romano

The programme of the Christmas concert will transport the audience to Christmas in Baroque Rome and will feature works by Italian masters that are full of both virtuosic and melodious elements. Baroque Rome was dominated by church music, but instrumental forms and cantatas also had room to flourish. Most performances took place in churches and the palaces of the high nobility. The opera that prevailed in the rest of Italy was repeatedly banned in Rome and was mostly performed only in the closed society of nobles’ theatres. In this environment, the concerto grosso developed mainly thanks to Arcangelo Corelli and his pupil Francesco Geminiani. Their work will be complemented by the expressive five-part tarantella from Cristofar Caresana᾿s Christmas cantata of the same name. The first part of the concert will conclude with the well-known arias from George Frideric Handel᾿s oratorio Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno, which he composed and performed in Rome in 1707 to a libretto by the renowned patron of music, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilli. The second part of the concert will feature the Czech premiere of the beautiful Christmas cantata “Abramo, il tuo sembiante”, by Alessandro Scarlatti, the most important Italian composer of operas and cantatas, who again spent a significant part of his career in the city of cities: Rome. Baroque Rome was not only a great inspiration for musicians from other European centres, but it also represents an almost bottomless well of quality music that deserves its place on contemporary stages.