Trio Belcanto / Tavolata musicale

Claudio Danuser’s search for new means of mediating classical opera music to a public unaccustomed to it led him to develop the Tavolata musicale in 1993. This is a special form of dinner-cum-concert, created in collaboration with the gastronomy chain BINDELLA for the OPUS/Kindli restaurant. It offers a skilful combination of an Italian dinner menu with a programme of Italian music that presents the Italian art of singing in small doses with an entertaining commentary, but still in concentrated form to be listened to actively, not as background music for dinner chatter. There are three concert sections of some 20 minutes each, during which the table service is halted and the lights are dimmed. The second of these is an abridged, scenic performance of the comic intermezzo La Serva padrona by Pergolesi, performed in the midst of the audience, with either a guest or a waiter from the restaurant drawn in to play the silent role of Vespone.

This Tavolata musicale has been performed with much success over a hundred times in different Bindella restaurants and has been invited to give numerous guest performances (e.g. at the Hotel Giardino in Ascona, in the Grand Hotel in Merano, at Chillon Castle, at evening events of various banks, of Omega etc.) and has even been performed on a boat on Lake Geneva for an excursion undertaken by the Swiss parliamentarians.