Name: Giuseppe Gazzaniga: ‘alcina’s Island’
Start: 2024-09-13T19:00:00
Location: Smith Square Hall

Thomas Blunt

Sinfonia Smith Square

The programme is a love letter to 20th-century song in all its forms. 

From the soaring romanticism of Alma Mahler and Richard Strauss to the bittersweet elegance of Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim, this concert brings together worlds that rarely meet. 

You’ll hear music from beloved films and musicals alongside lush orchestral arrangements of song cycles and solo pieces all carefully curated to tell a story that is moving, varied and richly expressive.

Fantasia Orchestra with Niamh O’Sullivan

Smith Square Hall

An Englishman, a Frenchman, a German, an Italian and a Spaniard all get washed up on a remote desert island. The colourful flora and fauna suggest an enticing paradise, and the resident nymphs prove pleasantly attentive. But a shadow is cast when our intrepid Europeans discover that this tropical speck of land is ruled by a capricious sorceress – a mere 800 years old, and drop-dead gorgeous – who has the disconcerting habit of transforming her discarded lovers into rocks, trees or animals. But it is so difficult to resist falling in love…The Venetian composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga was famous for his fluent, joyful and graceful music.