11.07.2025

OLIVIA VERMEULEN at the Spoleto Festival

‘But you, man, how long will you live?’ It is the whole earth that questions us in Gustav Mahler's last grandiose song cycle. Taken from an anthology of Chinese authors who lived between the 12th and 19th centuries and were translated into German by Hans Bethge and others, the ‘Song of the Earth’ for tenor, alto and orchestra is a reflection on the finiteness of human life and the immensity of nature and rebirth. Schönberg began a transcription for chamber ensemble in 1920, but it remained a fragment and was not completed until 1980 by musicologist Rainer Riehn.

For Olivia Vermeulen, this year's edition of the Spoleto Festival offers a suitable atmospheric setting for the revival of a work that she has already performed under the direction of Iván Fischer in Budapest at the beginning of March and subsequently also at the Concertgebouw Bruges. Under the direction of Giuseppe Mentuccia, the musicians of the Budapest Festival Orchestra will certainly succeed once again in expressing the density and motifs of the score in an intimate and personal dimension.

Cast

Olivia Vermeulen, mezzo-soprano
Toby Spence, tenor

Giuseppe Mentuccia, conductor
Musicians of the Budapest Festival Orchestra