Momenti Musicali: Franz Liszt and Francesco Petrarca

Music and literature have always been related to each other. Many composers have been inspired by literary works for their compositions. With Momenti Musicali musicians and actors work together to accompany you on a fantastic journey through notes and words. The musicians will play the pieces linked to the literary passages that will be read in Italian and in English.

In this third iteration, we will explore how Liszt musically interprets three of Petrarca's sonnets.

Pianist: Luana Struppa - Actors: Viviana Dragani and Steve Dooner

Artistic Direction: Daniela Roma - Moderator and Supervisor: Chiara Durazzini

Sponsored by the Società Dante Alighieri - Roma. In collaboration with Dante Alighieri Society - Michigan and under the Auspices of the Consulate General of Italy in Boston and the Consulate General of Italy in Detroit.

Luana Struppa graduated from the Bologna (Italy) Conservatory of Music. She specialized in Ecole Normale de Musiquein Paris (France), in Hogheschool Von Music und Danse di Rotterdam (Netherlands) and later she got her degree in Music Disciplines. She participated in different competitions being always among the first. She played in concerts in Italy, France, Austria, Netherlands, USA, Spain and Belgium.

Viviana Dragani is a singer, radio host and voice talent from Turin (Italy).

Former member of “Blue Dolls”, a swing vocal trio who performed all over Italy and Europe. The Blue Dolls participated in several RAI TV programs and in a program hosted by Maurizio Costanzo (Canale 5).

Television audience appreciated Viviana performing with her own voice as the singer Nuccia Natali in the RAI mini-series “The Swing Girls”, and her role as an opera singer in the RAI fiction “Violetta”. She hosted 3 editions of the international short movie competition “I’ve seen festivals”, co-hosting with the Hollywood star Rutger Hauer.

Her discography includes two albums recorded with the trio Blue Dolls, launched by famous singer and personality Renzo Arbore. Viviana also recorded two albums as a soloist “Il ricordo di te” and “Almatango”.

As a voice talent she worked on advertisements for international companies such as Sensodyne, Disney, IKEA and Scotch Brite.

Viviana is also host of the successful Italian radio show Itali-Echo which airs weekly on the International Radio station WNTN 1550 AM.

Steve Dooner is a professor of English and Theater Arts at Quincy College. He both directs and acts on the South Shore and Boston, and his 2013 production of The Bacchae at The Oberon Theater in Cambridge was the A.R.T.’s official selection for the first Boston Fringe Festival.  He has more recently directed productions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, As You Like It, and Julius Caesar as well as familiar contemporary plays, such as John Patrick Stanley’s Doubt, Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and Steve Martin’s Picasso at Lapin Agile.

Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer,a virtuoso  pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, and organist of the Romantic Era. He is regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time. Liszt gained renown in Europe during the early nineteenth century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composers of his time, including Friederich Chopin, Charles Valentin Alkan, Richard Wagner,  Robert Schumann and  Clara Schumann, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint Saëns, Edvard Grieg… A prolific composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School (German: Neudeutsche Schule). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work that influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends.

Francesco Petrarca (20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), was an Italian scholar and poet during the early Italian Reinassance, and one of the earliest humanists. In the 16th century Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio  and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for Lyrical poetry He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the Dark Ages .Petrarca was born in Arezzo, Tuscan on 20 July 1304.  He is best known for his Italian poetry, notably the  Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta ("Fragments of Vernacular Matters"), a collection of 366 lyric poems in various genres also known as 'canzoniere' ('songbook'), and the Triumphi ("Triumphs"), a six-part narrative poem of Dantean inspiration. However, Petrarch was an enthusiastic Latin scholar and did most of his writing in this language. His Latin writings include scholarly works, introspective essays, letters, and more poetry.  Petrarch also published many volumes of his letters, including a few written to his long-dead friends from history such as Cicero  and Virgil. Cicero, Virgil, and Seneca were his literary models