Palestrina (ancient Praeneste; Ancient Greek: Πραίνεστος, Prainestos) is an ancient city and comune (municipality) with a population of about 21,000, in Lazio, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Prenestina.
It is the birthplace of composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
Palestrina is sited on a spur of the Monti Prenestini, a range in the central Apennines.
Palestrina borders the following municipalities: Artena, Castel San Pietro Romano, Cave, Gallicano nel Lazio, Labico, Rocca di Cave, Rocca Priora, Rome, San Cesareo, Valmontone, Zagarolo.
Early burials show that the site was already occupied in the 8th or 7th century BC. The ancient necropolis lay on a plateau at the foot of the hill below the ancient town. Of the objects found in the oldest graves, and supposed to date from about the 7th century BC, the cups of silver and silver-gilt and most of the gold and amber jewelry are Phoenician (possibly Carthaginian), but the bronzes and some of the ivory articles seem to be of the Etruscan civilization.
Palestrina is an opera by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, first performed in 1917. The composer referred to it as a Musikalische Legende (musical legend), and wrote the libretto himself, based on a legend about the Renaissance musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who saves the art of contrapuntal music (polyphony) for the Church in the sixteenth century, through his composition of the Missa Papae Marcelli. The wider context is that of the European Reformation and the role of music in relation to it. The character of Cardinal Borromeo is depicted, and a General Congress of the Council of Trent is the centrepiece of Act II.
The conductor of the premiere was Bruno Walter. On 16 February 1962, the day before he died, Walter ended his last letter with: "Despite all the dark experiences of today I am still confident that Palestrina will remain. The work has all the elements of immortality".
Claire Taylor-Jay has discussed Pfitzner's depiction of the political relationship between Palestrina and the Council of Trent, in the light of several German "artist-operas" such as Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler.Mosco Carner has written on Pfitzner's own expression of the role of spontaneous inspiration in composition, as expressed in Palestrina. Several scholarly articles have delved into Pfitzner's musical and ideological conservatism, as expressed in this opera. Gottfried Scholz has written of Pfitzner's depiction of the title character as a surrogate for himself. Karen Painter has discussed commentary on the opera in Nazi Germany.
Palestrina may refer to:
The colors have built up in my mind
They're bleeding through my heart
And nobody knows that they exist
Look at my bursted veins
Now do you see the red in me
It's a sign for the end
Only the end of the red
Will show you my blue side
I've been given my brush and plate
But where will i paint my life
And will the buyer in the sky
Believe in what i dream
And it's so hard for me to explain
What i will miss