Happy 2025

For a New Year's Eve in music, the appointment is at La Fenice in Venice

From the Teatro La Fenice, the New Year's Concert will be broadcast live on television to the homes of Italians. On the podium the English Maestro Daniel Harding

29 December 2024

2' min read

New Year's Eve in music from the lagoon again this year with the 22nd edition of the New Year's Concert, which will be broadcast live on television from La Fenice in Venice on Wednesday 1 January 2025, starting at 12.20 p.m., on Rai1.

Daniel Harding

On the podium is the English Maestro Daniel Harding - almost a regular at the Lagoon New Year's Eve celebration - who is about to conduct the Orchestra and Choir of the Teatro La Fenice for the fifth time, avoiding his commitments as an airline pilot and the newly appointed music director of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

The programme of the concert that will greet the year 2025 consists of two parts: the first, exclusively orchestral, which is not part of the live television broadcast and which includes a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor op. 67. The second part, on the other hand, which the television audience will be able to watch from home, is dedicated as usual to melodrama, with a roundup of arias and choral passages from the best-loved Italian repertoire: Rossini, Leoncavallo, Puccini and Wolf-Ferrari.

A Homage to Georges Bizet

A small tribute is also dedicated to Georges Bizet, 150 years after the composer's death and the premiere of his 'Carmen', with the performance of Suite no. 2 from l'Arlésienne and Danse bohème from Carmen. To end with Verdi's "Va' pensiero" and the inevitable toast on the notes of "Libiam ne' lieti calici" from La Traviata, which everyone hopes will be a good omen also for the Venetian theatre itself, still without a Superintendent: on 12 December last, in fact, Fortunato Ortombina left the Fenice to take over as Superintendent of La Scala in Milan, while the Ministry has not yet given any indication of the name of his replacement in Venice.

For the 2025 edition of the New Year's Concert, the invited soloists are soprano Mariangela Sicilia - making her debut on the Venetian stage - and tenor Francesco Demuro.

The dance interludes included during the live broadcast are entrusted to the dancers of Aterballetto, who in recent days have recorded some choreographies, conceived for the occasion by Marcos Morau, in some of the most peculiar places in Venice, including a vaporetto. Tradition and contemporaneity are therefore closely linked in this New Year's Concert at La Fenice, which year after year registers ever greater approval ratings.

The live television broadcast of New Year's Day will be shown on Rai5 at 5.45 p.m., while the concert will be broadcast in its entirety on Rai Radio3 on Wednesday 1 January at 8.30 p.m. and on Rai5 on Thursday 27 February 2025 at 9.15 p.m.