After last year’s Carmina Burana, an appointment in Piazza San Marco with Beethoven’s masterpiece conducted by the Slovakian master.
Piazza San Marco turns once again in the most beautiful open-air theatre for a production of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony that will see Juraj Valčuha conduct the Fenice Theatre Orchestra and Choir. The Symphony is a very well-known piece of classical music of high symbolic value. It goes beyond entertainment, and reflects Beethoven’s complex personality, which expressed in the highest in symphony form, indeed. Composed between 1800 and 1832, his ninth symphonies convey the explosive, innovative force of his musical energy. The Ninth, composed in a poignant E- tone, is an absolute masterpiece, a synthesis of ethical and sentimental depth. Beethoven’s modernity is apparent in the regrouping of musical genres: never before had anyone included four solo voices and a mixed choir of male and female voices. Daringly, he entrusted the solo voices and choir the finis of this powerful musical work, which integrated a few verses from Schiller’s Ode to Joy.
This meant integrating ideological content that mirrored Beethoven’s own moral ideals: an aspiration to universal brotherhood, the overcoming of suffering in a higher order of harmony, and the foundation of joy upon the love of our celestial father. In Schiller’s poetry, we find a heartfelt yearning for the absolute and a desire for the immortal value of greatness and faith, which draw us closer to God. It is a revealing moment in that a parallel had been drawn between these contents and a possible masonic reading. It has been speculated that both Beethoven and Schiller espoused these masonic ideals. The Ninth Symphony was performed for the first time in Vienna on May 7, 1824, starring contralto Caroline Unger and tenor Anton Haizinger. Legend has it that the audience loved it enthusiastically, and tributed Beethoven – by the time almost completely deaf – not with clapping, but by waving their kerchiefs. The Ode to Joy has been adopted by the Council of Europe as anthem in 1972. In 1985, it has been adopted by the European Economic Community, which later became the European Union.
