Ravinia 2024 Issue 3

on December 14, 1924, at the Augusteo (the for- mer mausoleum of Caesar Augustus, converted to a concert hall in 1907) under the direction of Bernardino Molinari. Respighi visited the Unit- ed States the following year at the invitation of Arturo Toscanini, who presented the first Amer- ican performance of Pines of Rome on January 14, 1926. Carnegie Hall, all adorned with flowers and Italian flags, erupted with applause after the final notes died away. The enthusiastic audience recalled Toscanini to the stage five times, but the house erupted when Respighi appeared for the sixth bow. The following day, the exhilarated composer traveled to Philadelphia to conduct Pines of Rome with Leopold Stokowski’s finely honed en- semble. His first American tour included dates in Washington, DC, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Pines of Rome and the Concerto in Mixolydian Mode under Respighi (who also ap- peared as piano soloist in the concerto) during that season. After completing the “Roman triptych” in 1928, Respighi and his dear wife Elsa purchased a country villa outside Rome surrounded by ev- ergreen trees, which they named I Pini (The Pines). There, the composer worked in peaceful seclusion with an expansive view of the wooded lot. The librettist Claudio Guastalla, who pro- vided texts for Respighi’s last six operas, grasped the significance of this property: “The symbolic pines dreamed by a poet are transformed into a grove of leafy, living pines and crown the house of the man who sings about them.” Respighi died at the Villa I Pini on April 18, 1936. –Program notes © 2024 Todd E. Sullivan David Roberts’s Rome: Sunset from the Convent of Sant’ Onofrio on the Janiculum (1857) VALENTINA PELEGGI Music director of the Richmond Symphony in Virginia since 2020 and recently extended through 2028, Valentina Peleggi has been revi- talizing the ensemble’s artistic profile with new concert formats, national co-commission part- nerships, resident composer and conducting master class programs, and underrepresented repertoire. Highlights of this past season in- cluded concerts with the BBC Scottish Sym- phony and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as at Teatro Colón and Arena di Verona. Highly active as a guest conductor, Peleggi has recently appeared with the Dallas, Baltimore, New World, and Kansas City Sym- phonies, Grant Park Music Festival Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, BBC National Orches- tra of Wales, Brussels Philharmonic, Antwerp Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege, Nuremberg Symphoniker, Gulbenki- an Orchestra, Norrkoping Symphony, Orches- tra della Toscana, and Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano. Opera—especially bel canto—is at the core of Peleggi’s activity: in May she debuted at Seattle Opera conducting Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia , having led the work at Florentine Opera in 2022, and in 2021 she returned to the Teatro Verdi di Trieste for Verdi’s Rigoletto and made her debut in a new production of Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires at Opéra de Lyon. She conducted an acclaimed performance of Ros- sini’s Le Comte Ory with the Philharmonia Or- chestra at Garsington Opera in 2021, and while a Mackerras Fellow at English National Opera in 2018 and 2019, she conducted Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s La bohème among a wide range of repertoire. Since 2019, Peleggi has been mu- sic director for Italian repertoire at the Theatro São Pedro in São Paulo, where her production of Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri was recognized as “best opera of the year” (2019) by the main critic journal Rivista Concerto . After completing a master’s degree in conducting at the Conser- vatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome and post-grad- uate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she assisted Bruno Campanella and Gianluigi Gelmetti on several opera produc- tions and became a Taki Alsop Conducting Fel- low in 2015. Valentina Peleggi made her Ravinia and Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuts last season. JORGE FEDERICO OSORIO Jorge Federico Osorio began piano studies in his native Mexico at age 5 with his mother, Luz María Puente, and later attended music conser- vatories in Mexico, Paris, and Moscow, under such teachers as Bernard Flavigny, Monique Haas, and Jacob Milstein. His mentors also in- clude Nadia Reisenberg and Wilhelm Kempff, and he is now a faculty member of Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. Osorio’s numerous honors include the Medalla Bellas Artes, the highest honor given by Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts, as well as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Gina Bachauer Award. Concert tours have taken him to Europe, Asia, and the Americas with such en- sembles as Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Seattle Symphony Orchestras; the Israel, Warsaw, and Royal Philharmonics; the state orchestras of Moscow, France, and Mexico; and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra. Osorio’s Ravinia highlights include playing all five of Beethoven’s piano concertos over two nights in 2010, and he has also performed at the Hollywood Bowl and the Newport and Grant Park Festivals, among others. Also making regu- lar recital appearances across North America, he has recently performed in Los Angeles, Berke- ley, Boston, Chicago, Mexico City, and Xalapa with overseas engagements recently including Aix en Provence, San José (Costa Rica), and Rio de Janeiro. As a chamber musician, Osorio has performed in a trio with violinist Mayumi Fujikawa and cellist Richard Markson; has col- laborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Ani Kavafian, Elmar Oliveira, Henryk Szeryng, and the Pacifica and Moscow Quartets; and was previously artistic director of Mexico’s Brahms Chamber Music Festival. A prolific recording artist, he earned praise from Gramophone for a solo Brahms disc and has also been featured playing concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Chávez, Ponce, Ravel, and Rodrigo, among many others. His many albums on Cedille, EMI, Naxos, and other labels have established him as one of the world’s greatest interpreters of Hispanic piano music. Jorge Fed- erico Osorio made his Ravinia debut in 1998 and tonight makes his 12th appearance at the festival. RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 77 ALESSANDROMICHELAZZI(PELEGGI);TODDROSENBERG(OSORIO)