Venice New Year's Concert

What it is

The New Year's Concert is the Teatro La Fenice's own event, given by its orchestra, its chorus and guest soloists. In Italian it is the Concerto di Capodanno del Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, shortened in English to the Venice New Year's Concert. Its model is the New Year's concert held for much longer in Vienna. The Venice version began in 2004. The programme is played more than once: a run of December performances leads up to the New Year's Day concert itself, which Italian television covers and which several foreign broadcasters take.

Origins and history

The concert grew out of the rebuilding of La Fenice. A fire destroyed the theatre on the evening of 29 January 1996, and years of work followed before it opened again. When those works were complete, a concert on 1 January 2004 was planned as the last of the events marking the reconstruction. Anna Elena Averardi, who advised the theatre on its public image, put the idea forward, and Fabrizio Del Noce, then head of Rai 1, took it up. The music critic Pietro Acquafredda helped shape the programmes from the first year until 2014, working to a commission from Rai 1. Individual editions have carried dedications: 2011 marked 150 years of Italian independence, with the national anthem played, and 2013 honoured Verdi.

Music and dance

The concert is divided in two. The first part is orchestral: symphonies and other works played by the orchestra alone. The second part turns to opera, with arias and scenes that bring in solo singers and the theatre's chorus. Two pieces are kept back and played at the end whatever else appears in the programme. One is the chorus Va, pensiero from Verdi's Nabucco, the other the drinking toast Libiamo ne' lieti calici from his La Traviata. Neither is listed in advance, and both come round every year.

Around the world

Television has carried the concert well beyond Venice. Rai 1 shows the opera section as it happens, and from 2014 Rai 5 has shown a version in the evening. Listeners and viewers in France, Germany, Japan and Latin America receive the concert as well. Since 2016 it has been offered by ARTE, ZDR, WSR and Radio France, and by a number of radio and television broadcasters in Eastern European countries. Anyone who misses it in January can watch the whole performance on Rai 5 roughly a month afterwards.

How Venice New Year's Concert is kept

The orchestra and chorus of the Teatro La Fenice perform, with solo singers joining for the operatic second half. The programme is repeated in a short run before the year turns: 28 and 29 December at eight in the evening, 30 December at five, and 31 December at four. Then comes the New Year's Day performance, which begins at 11.15 in the morning, with live coverage starting at 12.20. It ends with Va, pensiero and then the toast Libiamo ne' lieti calici.

When and where

It falls on 1 January every year, beginning at about a quarter past eleven in the morning, with live broadcasting from 12.20. The same programme is also given earlier in the same week, in a run of December performances that finishes on the 31st.

It is held at the Teatro La Fenice, the opera house of Venice, Italy, the city it belongs to. The music travels much further than the theatre: the concert is heard and seen in France, Germany, Japan and Latin America, and on radio and television in several Eastern European countries.

What Venice New Year's Concert means

For Venice, the concert is a way of starting the year in the theatre the city rebuilt after the fire of 1996. That history is part of what the morning means to the people who go. The two Verdi pieces at the close are the best known part of the programme, and they give the event a shape that audiences recognise and expect.

Questions people ask about Venice New Year's Concert

See also

Lion danceA dynamic ritual dance featuring costumed lions, drums and martial acrobaticsDragon danceA long dragon puppet on poles, danced by a team at Chinese New Year and other festivalsMummers' playA comic folk drama of staged combat, death, and revival by an eccentric doctorSilent NightA Christmas carol composed in Austria in 1818, now sung worldwide as a symbol of peace.

Good reading and sources

• Venice New Year's Concert on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

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