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City Lights

Wednesday

08.12.2021

19:30 — Victoria Hall

Concert film

Partenaire de prestige

Thursday

09.12.2021

20:15 — Salle Métropole

Concert film

Grand Mécène

Programme

Timothy Brockconductor

Charlie Chaplin

City Lights

The music

Charlie Chaplin's moving farewell to the world of silent cinema, City Lights, is a fable as well as an extraordinary social critique filmed in the midst of the 1930 economic crisis. The Tramp is a poor man who helps the poor in an unjust and hypocritical world, all seasoned with a cleverly dosed burlesque spirit.

For this ageless masterpiece, Charlie Chaplin composed all the music and created a soundtrack with various sound effects. As in Wagner's operas, Chaplin devised leitmotifs to accompany each character, with the wanderer's leitmotif presenting a mixture of melancholy and hope. Only the theme of the Flower Girl (the young blind flower girl) is borrowed from La Violetera, a song composed by José Padilla Sánchez in 1915. The latter filed a complaint against the director, who was ordered to pay the composer a large sum of money.

City lights is one of the most beautiful films in the history of world cinema, thanks to its direction, the acting and the message it contains.

The videos

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OSR Live

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Ludwig van Beethoven

Symphony N°9 with choir for the finale of « Ode to Joy»

Jonathan Nott

conductor

Recorded on 11 June 2020 at Victoria Hall, Geneva

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JONATHAN NOTT

Conductor

Yvonne Naef

mezzo-soprano

György Ligeti
Poème symphonique, pour cent métronomes

Johann Sebastian Bach
Komm süsser Tod (orchestration by Leopold Stokowski)

Gustav Mahler
Kindertotenlieder, for mezzo-soprano and orchestra

Recorded on 21 January 2021 at Victoria Hall, Geneva

Highlights

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