This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, and the Cervantino International Festival is dedicated to the legendary author and his famed masterpiece Don Quixote. The festival has commissioned a piece for baritone and orchestra by Fabio Vacchi entitled Vencidos. The libretto is based on a poem by the Spanish poet Leon Felipe (1884-1968), which depicts the dire solitude of Don Quixote.  The world premiere will be performed in Guanajuato on October 16, by the Orquesta Filarmonica de Jalisco, conducted by Marco Parisotto, featuring baritone Carlo Almaguer. 

Musicologist Carmelo Di Gennaro writes: In this new work, Vacchi uses a very large orchestra, but despite the size, the orchestral fabric is subtle and delicate, allowing us to hear all of the inner lines of the score with clarity. Right from the start, Vacchi, true to his style, paints what he calls "a harmonic field" – which is to say, a specific group of five intervals which, from the very first notes express the color of the piece and indicate the basic elements of the musical architecture in its entirety [...].

October 22 marks the Italian premiere of Fabio Vacchi’s La giusta armonia (“The Right Harmony”) in Torino. Gianandrea Noseda will be conducting the Orchestra del Teatro Regio. The performance features recitation by actor Sandro Lombardi. The composition was commissioned by the 2006 Salzburg Festival, where it made its world premiere, performed by the Wiener Philharmoniker under the direction of Riccardo Muti.