Hershey Felder presents
Opening the 2nd season in this unique series,
a beautiful musical retelling of the story of Dante and Beatrice
and the transcendent power of love.
The Heroine of Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY is Beatrice whom he met but only twice in Florence, once when he was nine, and again when he was eighteen. Dante was so smitten with Beatrice, that she remained his ideal love for the rest of his life. Our story begins in the little church that still stands in Florence where they first met more than 700 years ago. Known as the “Chiesa Di Dante,” it is where Beatrice is said to be buried. Next to Beatrice’s tomb is a basket, where for hundreds of years notes of hope, dreams, heartbreak and love have been left by visitors with open hearts asking for Beatrice’s blessing. One of those notes, is a mysterious old musical manuscript, and it is there
that our adventure begins.
Airing and steaming hersheyfelder.net
MOZART and FIGARO in Vienna
The world first heard and saw “The Marriage of Figaro” in Vienna in 1786. The opera considered by many the first and perhaps only perfect opera borne of a staggering collaboration between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte – a Jew, a Priest and a Brothel owner all rolled into one. Da Ponte had been banished from Venice due to his low-rent behavior, and he ended up in Vienna, where he was introduced to Mozart by Mozart’s landlord, a mutual acquaintance of both. Finding each other full of jokes and high-jinks, with Mozart at the helm, the two of them decide to take a banned play by the French writer Beaumarchais, and turn it into the greatest and most beloved opera ever composed.