The 101st Opera Season at the Verona Arena hosts a special evening. The orchestra and choir of the Arena di Verona will perform on August 11 in a symphonic concert on the IX Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, giving the audience of the amphitheatre an unforgettable evening, after the previous sold-outs.
The monumental Symphony No. 9 in D minor for soloists, choir and orchestra op. 125 is the last of the symphonies composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, who received a commission from the London Philharmonic Society in 1817. The main work of writing took place between 1822 and 1824, the date of completion of the autograph; Beethoven had conceived the idea of writing two symphonies of unusual size and character, one of which was purely instrumental, the other with the intervention of singing. To these two projects is added a third, which gives unity and fulfillment to the work: putting Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy to music.
Political freedom and freedom of thought, the essence of the Enlightenment Joy and the key concept of the Schillerian ode, was in fact a theme very dear to Beethoven, who had made his own those ideals permeated with secular religiosity and universalist impulse.
