New Year’s Concert

Concerto de Ano Novo

Live music

Sunday 3 January · 17:00

A dramatic journey through 19th-century choral and orchestral pages, conducted by Renato Balsadonna, featuring the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra and the Choir of São Carlos National Theatre.

As midnight strikes, opera offers us the truest mirror of our anxieties, fears and hopes. The New Year's Concert of the São Carlos National Theatre invites the audience to experience, in a single evening, a dramaturgical journey through choral and orchestral pages that cross the 19th century in Europe, under the musical direction of Renato Balsadonna, with the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra and the Choir of the São Carlos National Theatre. The journey begins in the comic bustle of Donizetti's Don Pasquale and glides into the contemplative serenity of Bellini's La straniera, before leading us to the solemn announcement of the arrival of Norma. Next comes the bucolic tableau of the 'Spinners' chorus' from Alfredo Keil's A Serrana, a major example of the Portuguese lyric repertoire. The fantastic atmosphere of the ballet of Gounod's Faust opens the way to Bizet's Carmen, whose prelude and march from Act IV evoke Spanish passion and tragedy, prolonged in the violinistic virtuosity of Sarasate's Fantasía Carmen, with Alexis Hatch as soloist. Emblematic choruses by Verdi follow: La Traviata, Il Trovatore, Macbeth and Ernani, and the Rossinian energy of La gazza ladra, William Tell, La Cenerentola and L'Italiana in Algeri. Between comedy, witchcraft, passion and redemption, this concert invites us to rediscover, in music, the eternal dialogue between past and future that each New Year proposes.