In Italy, New Years Eve marks the feast of San Silvestro. After a family meal, people ring in the new year with parties and fireworks at midnight.
After a late night of revelry, New Years Day marks time for another classic tradition - the Concerti di Capodanno. Concerti di Capodanno are New Year's Day concerts.
The most famous January 1st concert is the one performed every year since 1939 by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert features the music of the Strauss family, including renditions of Blue Danube and Radetzky March. The concert is broadcast in the morning of January 1st to television sets all over the world and Italian families were part of that worldwide viewership - until ten years ago.
Since 2004, in the morning of New Year's Day, Italians tune in for a musical experience from Venice's La Fenice rather than Vienna. In 2004, the theatre re-opened its doors to the public after a long restoration project that followed a terrible act of arson that took place in 1996. Starting that year, the Italian broadcast network RAI 1 began to show the Venice performance live in the morning, rather than the Vienna concert, which is instead recorded and broadcast in Italy in the afternoon.
This year, the 29-year-old Venezuelan Maestro Diego Matheuz, main director of the La Fenice Theater Foundation since July 2011, will conduct the 11th edition of the New Year’s concert. The second part of the concert will be broadcast live by Rai1, Arte, ZDF, WDR, Radio France and various Eastern European broadcasters. The Concert will be published on DVD by ArtHaus Musik.
Vienna and Venice are not the only two options when it comes to concerti di Capodanno. Many families prefer to spend the day attending one of the live concerti that are performed at theaters throughout Italy.
In addition to La Fenice in Venice, other Italian performances will take place at La Scala in Milan, Parco della Musica in Rome, Teatro San Carlo in Naples and Teatro Massimo in Palermo.
