Mendelssohn's Italian | OML

The Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra opens the 26/27 Season with a concert in which the spirit of travel and the Italian landscape run through three works from different eras and musical languages. Musical direction is by Pedro Neves.

The program begins with the overture to the opera *L’hôtellerie portugaise*, by L. Cherubini, continues with *Divertimento No. 1*, by Joly Braga Santos, and culminates in *Symphony No. 4, Italian*, by F. Mendelssohn. The selection of these pieces highlights an idea of Italy seen through different authors: the memory of travel, the dramatic imagination, and a symphonic writing marked by brightness and movement.

In Mendelssohn, the reference to Italy appears as the starting point for a symphony of serene energy and solar character; in Joly Braga Santos, the connection to Rome intersects with an attention to Portuguese landscapes; and in Cherubini, the fictional setting of the inn on the border between Portugal and Spain adds a theatrical note to the whole.