Daniele Di Virgilio - Clavigo, chamber opera (act 4). 
Recording of the première, 7 December 2024, Budapest Music Center.
Márta Murányi (Sopran), Anna Molnár (Mezzosopran), Georgi Sztojanov (Tenor), Zsombor Cserményi (Bariton)
Classicus Quartet: Eszter Kökény (Violine), Alíz Gál-Szabó (Violine), Péter Tornyai (Viola), Tamás Zétényi (Violoncello)

The chamber opera Clavigo is a project promoted by the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation and supported by Kunststiftung NRW and Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, to celebrate the 275th anniversary of the birth of J.W. Goethe and the 250th anniversary of the publication of his play. 
The four acts of the drama were set to music by four different composers: Elias Frisk (1st act), Aurélie Ferrière (2nd act), Daniel Lee Chappell (3rd act) and Daniele Di Virgilio (4th act). 

(PLOT) Goethe’s play is a tale of competing ambition and love. Clavigo is an up-and-coming Spanish writer. In his younger and poorer days, he fell in love with and became engaged to the charming but sickly Marie. However, when his star started to rise, his friends convinced him that Marie would hold his career back. At best, she’d be a distraction; at worst, she’d prevent an advantageous marriage. So he broke the engagement. Marie’s brother Beaumarchais (yes, the French playwright—this is loosely based on real events) has come to Spain to confront Clavigo. He exorts a (potentially career-killing) written confession of wrongdoing from Clavigo but promises not to have it published until Clavigo can ask Marie for pardon and renew their engagement. Clavigo successfully does this. Marie, upon hearing of this, dies. Clavigo (who has not heard the news) stumbles upon her funeral procession and is distraught. Beaumarchais fatally stabs Clavigo, and Clavigo accepts his death as atonement for his crime (@Ilana Walder-Biesanz).

Clavigo, chamber opera (2024)

Daniele Di Virgilio is an Italian Berlin-based composer and perpetual researcher. Conceiving composition as a multi-disciplinary and social-oriented expression, his music is inspired by a theatrical imagination and by the interest in psychoanalysis.