Nabucco

“Va’ pensiero” — all of Milan was singing it in 1842 after hearing the opera of the twenty-nine-year-old Giuseppe Verdi. In the music of Nabucco, one can already feel the pulsating passionate and direct melodic style that would later become Verdi’s unmistakable trademark.

Its success was also fueled by the fact that the people of Milan, then at war with the Austrian armies, recognized their own nation’s fate in the biblical story, which tells of the Jews carried away into Babylonian captivity and of King Nebuchadnezzar descending into the madness of power. Although Verdi’s life and oeuvre became truly symbolic only one or two decades later, after the achievement of Italian unification, the chorus from Nabucco is still known today as a song of freedom.

The concert performance focuses our attention on the dramatic power of the music, as well as on the voices of the chorus and soloists. The evening’s conductor is the enthusiastic “ambassador” of opera, Gergely Kesselyák.

Photo: Gergely Kesselyák © Ágnes Molnár