New Music for Dante
The Paradiso
Kyiv Chamber Choir
Mykola Hobdych conductor
Valentin Silvestrov
In Memoriam (2020)
for acapella choir
world premiere
O luce etterna (2020)
version for acapella choir and piano
world premiere
commissioned by Ravenna Festival
Valentin Silvestrov’s poetic sky is ablaze with two polar stars, Dante Alighieri and Taras Ševčenko, whose voices, however distant in time and space, did something similar in creating new languages: as Dante invented Italian poetry seven hundred years ago, Ševčenko founded modern Ukrainian literature in the XIX century. These two stars light up the new opera that the Ravenna Festival has commissioned from the Ukrainian composer: O luce etterna, a cantata in ten acts, mainly inspired by Dante’s Paradiso but also incorporating Ševčenko’s poem Evening. The Cherry Orchard. The two languages will be brought even closer by Silvestrov’s decision of using the Ukrainian translation of the Divine Comedy, released in 2015.
