This week Festival Della Valle D’Itria is set to present its final opera of the season. It will world premiere “Opera Italiana” by Nicola Campogrande, a composer who is regarded as “one of the most interesting Italian composers of the young generation.”

The new opera was written between 2008 and 2010 and was commissioned by Comitato Italia 150. The opera is set in the past fifty years of Italian history and the story takes place during three key moments in recent history: the ‘60s and ‘70s, the ‘80s, and present day.

Campogrande said “For ‘Opera Italiana,’ I composed cheerful and intense music, which alternates with moments of absolute fun with pages in which love, passion and in some cases drama dominate. The music features melodies, harmonies, rhythms and instrumental solutions that allow the performers to express themselves, have fun and enter into a relationship with the public.”

He added, “It is an opera: the public will therefore rediscover structures and methods that, from Monteverdi to Puccini, have become familiar to us. But it is a work that is born today, now, and therefore relies on the past to move forward, tell the present and, who knows, maybe deliver it to the future.”

Throughout the years the Italian composer’s music has been performed by such artists as Gautier Capuçon, Riccardo Chailly, Lilya Zilberstein, Mario Brunello, and Roberto Abbado and has been recorded on more that 35 CDs.

For those not in Martina Franca, Campogrande’s music is set to be presented around teh world next season with such orchestras as Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, Staatsorchester Stuttgart, Orchestre National Avignon-Provence, Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Recordings 

For those not familiar with the composer’s work, Campogrande has a number of recordings that you can discover here.

Here are excertps from his Works: