Marco
Frisina USA
Renowned Italian Composer of Sacred, Liturgical, Opera & Film Music
Other 2011 Performances
Santa Cecilia - Patron Saint of Musicians
Basilica of Santa Cecilia, Trastevere, Rome, Italy
Sacred Cantata Passio Caeciliae
St. Cecilia Church, East Harlem, NYC
May 20, 2011
As part of the Divinamente New York 2011 Festival (celebrating 150 years of Italian Unity with this Festival of Spirituality), the first performance in the USA of the Marco Frisina’s sacred cantata, Passio Caeciliae (9 movements for soprano, narrator, choir and orchestra) was performed by the Divinamente Festival Orchestra of New York and the choir Schola Cantorum.
The ancient text for the work was the 5th century "Passio Caeciliae" which contains a legendary account of the martyrdom of Cecilia, the daughter of a noble Roman family who was martyred, according to tradition, at the end of the second century, right in her home. The work was conducted by Flavio Emilio Scogna with soprano Marta Vulpi and narrator David Sebastian.
Saint Cecilia is the patroness of musicians. Marco Frisina was in attendance.
Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra Concert
Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
June 4, 2011
For the closing concert of its 50th anniversary celebratory season, the Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra (GPYO) created an all-Italian program conducted by its Music Director Fernando Raucci. Marco Frisina was commissioned by the GPYO to create a piece that showed the continuity and strength of Italian unification today. The suite, Italy in One's Heart, paid homage to Italian immigrants to the United States and to "all those Italians who brought a taste of Italy in their hearts."
Frisina’s background as a film score composer was evident as this seven-movement suite showed varied moods and historical drama for each. In three of the movements, soprano Samantha Pruyn Guevrekian sang texts drawn from Leonardo da Vinci’s Codice Trivulziano, a collection of drawings and writings by the artist dating from the late 15th century.