Stabat mater dolorosa

soprano

Gabriella Costa

director

Claudio Astronio

Academia Montis Regalis Youth Baroque Orchestra

Program

Stabat Mater

Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805)

The third study cycle of the Academia Montis Regalis Youth Baroque Orchestra, which will be entirely dedicated to Luigi Boccherini, a composer who plays a very special role in the history of Mondovi’s original instrument ensemble, which in 1996 made its first disc recording the three Symphonies op. 37 by the great master from Lucca.

This concert will also see the return of two musicians who had made a big name for themselves in last year’s playbill, namely soprano Gabriella Costa, who on June 6, 2023 had been featured again in Sala Ghislieri in a beautiful program of Händelian arias, and conductor and harpsichordist Claudio Astronio from Bolzano, who had been a guest of the Saracen Festival offering an exciting sylloge of cantatas by Sicilian composers Alessandro Scarlatti and Cataldo Amodei.

Abandoning the brilliant secular atmospheres, Gabriella Costa and Claudio Astronio will present Boccherini’s Stabat Mater, un majestic sacred fresco written by an author who excelled mainly in instrumental genres, particularly the string quartet and symphony, to the point of being compared in inspiration and stylistic perfection to none other than contemporary Franz Joseph Haydn.

Based on Latin verses traditionally attributed to the medieval poet Jacopone da Todi (ca 1230-1306), the Stabat Mater is one of the most sorrowful and dramatic texts in Catholic literature and over the centuries it has fired the imagination of dozens of composers-from the 16th-century Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Josquin Desprez to Nicola Piovani and the celebrated film score composer Stefano Lentini-who have declined according to their sensibilities to depict the heartbreaking pain of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross.