Classical Music & Guided Tours in Santa Maria Nuova

The first weeks of May bring two free concerts for Florentine classical music fans.

The association Musica Ricercata will be putting on musical events in the museum of Santa Maria Nuova, the oldest hospital still in operation, every Friday evening at 5:30 pm in the Salone Martino V. Each concert will be included by a guided tour of the cloisters that frame the hospital.

The evening of Friday, May 5 at 5:30 pm will feature selections from Mozart’s The Magic Flute performed by the Music Ricerata ensemble: soprano soloist Giulia Peri and violinists Pietro Ladislao Horvath and Michael Stüve. Mozart’s masterpiece has been reformatted based on 17 violin duets to specially fit the musicians’s interpretation.

The selections for the following Friday, May 12 also at 5:30 pm, are from Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. Michael Stüve will conduct a chamber version of Verdi’s opera inspired by the violin duets of Antonio Melchiori. The featured musicians this week are the members of the Musica Ricercata ensemble: soprano soloist Asako Uchimura, violinists Annamaria Fornasier and Michael Stüve, and cellist Roger Low.

As Florence’s longest continuously running hospital, Santa Maria Nuova was founded at the end of the thirteenth century.  In 1288, Monna Tessa, the governess of Beatrice Portinari, the great love of Dante’s life, convinced Beatrice’s rich banker father, Folco, to finance a hospital for the city’s poor.  Thanks to its wealthy patrons, the hospital gained power as an institution and was endowed with many important works of art during the following century.   On display in the museum are pieces created by Bici di Lorenzo, Verrocchio and Della Robbia (pictured)

Admission is free and the public is welcome.