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Ravenna Festival 2010 - 7Jun-13Jul
Program

Membership Sign Up

DATE
PERFORMANCE
TYPE
TIME
VENUE
Monday 07-06-2010
Prologo
Cercatori di tracce
left1Sophocles’ The Bloodhounds will be the final merry outcome of the workshop Teatro delle Albe are conducting in several of the world’s “outskirts”: Scampia, the black neighbourhood of Chicago, Senegal, the French or Belgian banlieues. As in Scampia, the first approach with the local teenagers – about 50 Tunisian and Sicilian kids – will be on the traces of ancient Greek drama, with a grotesque and “satiric” comedy. The amazing Dancing Satyr recovered from the sea floor off the coast of Mazara del Vallo and now visible in the local Museum will provide a useful visual suggestion to reinfuse life into Sophocles’ sneering and melancholy satyrs – wild creatures, human but beastlike semi-Gods who will come to life with the energy, tongues and imagination of the Mazara youths.]]>
Special Events
21:30
Rocca Brancaleone
 
Wednesday 09-06-2010
Orchestra Mozart direttore Claudio Abbado
left1If Woody Allen was right in stating that the second movement of Symphony K 551 is “one of the things worth living for”, Claudio Abbado’s choice of the “Jupiter” is quite apt to celebrate his return to Ravenna Festival after so many years. The great conductor, who has been providing a voice to future musicians for more than thirty years, founding and instructing several youth orchestras, will be accompanied by his latest creation, the Mozart Orchestra, born in Bologna in 2004. The programme will also include Mendelssohn’s superb Italian Symphony alongside the most popular and winning of Prokofiev’s Concerts, entrusted to the daring technique and poetic instinct of a young Chinese rising star, Yuja Wang.www.orchestramozart.com]]>
Concerts
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
 
Thursday 10-06-2010
Concerto Trekking
left1“Caminantes, no hay caminos. Hay que caminar” (“Travellers, there are no paths but we must walk on”), reads an old inscription on a monastery wall in Toledo. The pilgrim’s mystical dimension partially re-lives today in a new aesthetic and ecstatic dimension of walking. Thus, waiting for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre’s Songs of the Wanderers, Ravenna Festival and Trail Romagna invite all trekkers and would-be pilgrims to take the road, setting out for the sunset amongst our pine-trees and archaeologies, with a steady pace and open ears and mind, walking through fields and clearings on a series of short stops marked by musical encounters. A small trek along the songlines of Romagna, in the firm belief that “errare humanum est”.www.trailromagna.eu]]>
Special Events
19:00
Parco Archeologico di Classe
 
Friday 11-06-2010
Voci nella preghiera
left1Praying voices comes back this year as a moment of meeting and listening that will start with the meditation of one of the leading Italian philosophers, Umberto Galimberti. A meeting of the three great religions of the Book – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – in one of the most emblematic places of an ancient but still possible communion between East and West, the Basilica of San Vitale. A meeting of different people, ethnic groups or individuals, who will raise their praying voices to invoke God in multiples languages, multiple rites and the most varied forms of religiosity. A God who sometimes seems to deviate from the world leaving humans with an infinite desire for protection, comfort and reassurance: desires that are human, all too human.]]>
Special Events
21:00
Giardini di San Vitale
 
Saturday 12-06-2010
GÉRARD DEPARDIEU LEGGE SANT'AGOSTINO
left1The intense human adventure and the deep spiritual meditation the Saint from Tagaste committed to his Confessions are brought to life by the voice of Gerard Depardieu to the music of laReverdie. The French actor’s encounter with the Confessions generated his desire of going into churches, cathedrals and universities and read excerpts from the beloved book. Fascinated by St. Augustine’s vitality, Depardieu will lead the meditation to the spiritual richness gushing from the author’s vicissitudes: his conversion from doubt, his hunger for knowledge. LaReverdie will explore and underline the meanings of the text with their musical research, combining Ambrosian Hymns and improvisation.www.lareverdie.com]]>
Concerts
21:00
Sant'Apollinare in Classe
Saturday 12-06-2010
Tra Sponde
left1To cast away gloom and make sure that night finally gives way to daylight, darkness needs to be exorcised by a very special and explosive connection: Macedonian Kocani Orkestar meets Apulian Banda Municipale Balcanica. One of the leading East European brass bands fraternizes with the young but already well-known local band in a brand new project where each ensemble rearranges and interprets the other band’s music, in a vortex of different cues and genres. From Balkan weddings and funerals tunes to the folk music and village band traditions of Southern Italy, from jazz improvisation to the rhythms of Macedonian dervishes. And another star will help them officiate the rite: great saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano.]]>
Special Events
21:30
Palazzo San Giacomo (Russi)
 
Sunday 13-06-2010
La notte della Chiesa
left1If our title, Ex tenebris ad lucem, is loaded with references to the liturgy and the ideas of light as a symbol for Christ and darkness as a symbol for Evil or the world without Christ, our path intends to retrace the terms of this conflict within the double frame of history and contemporaneity. In the dark ages of Popes and Antipopes, the light of faith has never ceased to shine in the beautiful Mass of the code of Sainte-Anne d’Apt. The great creative turmoil of Palestrina and Counter-Reformation polyphonists is the expression of a recovered light. Two events will celebrate Light coming to the world through its intermediary, Mary. And finally, Orlando di Lasso’s Missa pro defunctis will bring relief to the victims of recent earthquakes: l’Aquila, Haiti and Chile.]]>
Sunday Liturgies
10:30
Basilica di San Vitale
Sunday 13-06-2010
Ex tenebris ad lucem
left1“The contrast between […] darkness and light, like that between summer and winter, was more strongly marked than it is in our lives”, wrote Johan Huizinga in The Waning of the Middle Ages: day and night, light and darkness marked the difference between good and evil, life and death, soul and body. Affliction, distress and downfall match darkness in the Dies irae by Thomas of Celano, while the sun and stars dress and crown Mary in Guillaume Du Fay’s setting of Petrarch’s Vergine bella. Our musical journey will stretch between these extremes, the xi and the xv centuries, and then leap forward to the present with three compositions by Doron Sherwin and Elisabetta de Mircovich, long-time members of laReverdie, a reference ensemble for medieval music for more than 20 years.www.lareverdie.com]]>
Concerts
21:00
Basilica di San Vitale
Sunday 13-06-2010
La notte del tango
left1The courtyard of xvii-century Palazzo San Giacomo will be the stage for The Night of Tango, with Juan José Mosalini’s Grand Tango Orchestra and Javier Girotto’s Aires Tango. Two different ways of approaching tango (“a sad thought to be danced”, as Enrique Santos Discépolo beautifully defined it): from the bandonéon of the most versatile ambassador of Argentinian original and modern tango, Mosalini, to the saxophone of Girotto, who, with his Aires Tango, blends this sensual dance with jazz. But there is no tango without dancers: and thus this endless night will create a dance floor between the ancient façade and the river bank, and turn the bandonéon sound into gesture.www.juanjosemosalini.com]]>
Special Events
21:30
Palazzo San Giacomo (Russi)
Sunday 13-06-2010
Stockhausen Nacht
left1The first Electronic Nocturne conceived by Tempo Reale, the centre for research, production and educational activities in the field of new musical technologies Berio founded in Florence in 1987, is dedicated to Stockhausen, the father of electronic music who died in 2007. The programme features his last masterpiece, Cosmic pulses, the “13th hour” from Klang, a cycle dedicated to the 24 hours of the day: it is an oneiric trip into the German composer’s most recent electronics, to be performed in pitch darkness. It will be counterbalanced by Spiral, composed for the Osaka Expo (1968). Aidoru will close the programme with a very personal performance of Tierkreis, a cycle of 12 mystical and esoteric melodies, each representing one sign of the Zodiac.]]>
Concerts
23:00
Artificerie Almagià
 
Tuesday 15-06-2010
Bill T. Jones-Arnie Zane Dance Company
left1A white stage on a black background and imposing columns – “Serenade/The Proposition” is a successful amalgam of distinct bits of dance movement, original music, familiar strains, video projections and text from memoirs and Abraham Lincoln’s speeches, the first work in a trilogy dedicated to the great President. Dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones started working on Lincoln in 2008 to explore the moral, social and political issues of past and present America. With his multiracial company, founded in Harlem in 1982 with Arnie Zane, the Afro-American dancer has confronted such bold subjects as Aids, Bush’s Iraq war, the aftermath of 9.11. Today, the 10-member company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
Tuesday 15-06-2010
Omaggio a Mauricio Kagel
left1This Electronic Nocturne is dedicated to Mauricio Kagel, the great Argentinian composer who died in 2008, and to one of his masterpieces, Acustica – for experimental sound-producers and loud-speakers, which superbly represents Kagel’s entire universe. The opera literally plays on music, theatre, improvisation and experimentation, in a research for a new relationship between the composer, the performer and the new technologies. The performance space is crowded with objects, toys, unconventional instruments and performing actions producing an original and playful narrative. Tempo Reale have devised a special staging of Acustica for Artificierie Almagià, with the collaboration of such important interpreters as Monica Benvenuti, Francesco Canavese and Jonathan Faralli.]]>
Concerts
23:00
Artificerie Almagià
 
Wednesday 16-06-2010
Ad Vesperas / Leçons Des Ténèbres
left1As with the panels of a precious diptych, independent but connected into one structure, Ravenna Festival offers a double concert – two jewels of sacred music to be performed in the basilicas of San Vitale and Santa Maria Maggiore: the voluptuous and ethereal atmosphere of Diego Ortiz’s Marian pieces, Musices Liber Primus, published in 1565, a mere two years after the Council of Trent had prescribed utmost sobriety in liturgy, and the Leçons des ténebrès, based on the Lamentations of Jeremiah and set to music by François Couperin in the Abbey of Longchamp, near Paris, for Ash Wednesday 1714. These will be re-proposed as they used to be, by the sole light of candles to be progressively extinguished: only the highest one will remain, symbolising Christ.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Basilica di San Vitale
 
Thursday 17-06-2010
Tenebrae factae sunt
left1The new and the old, and a singular mix of heterogeneous styles are the distinctive trait of this concert by Odhecaton, directed by Paolo Da Col, an ensemble specialising in the performance of Renaissance music, internationally appreciated for the elegance and grandeur of their sound. Besides Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories for Holy Saturday (1611), a prominent example of the composer’s intricate polyphonies, they will propose Palestrina’s severe and essential counterpoint alongside Arvo Pärt’s hieratic, archaic contemporary sounds, Wolfgang Rihm’s (b. 1952) stylistic eclecticism and Salvatore Sciarrino’s recent Responsorio delle tenebre (2001), alternating contemporary sounds and Gregorian chant.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Basilica di San Vitale
Thursday 17-06-2010
The Table of Earth
left1The third and last Electronic Nocturne, The Table of Earth, is a new original production where the performing versatility of David Moss—one of the most innovative vocalists and percussionists of our times—confronts the research of Tempo Reale in the fields of interactivity, microphone amplification techniques and sound processing. The project centres on a large working table, a real ‘microcosm’ where objects, instruments, sensors and microphones are placed, through which an imaginary “sound story” will take place in an uninterrupted discovery of unprecedented musical paths, enjoyable and fascinating. A guiding thread will be provided by a captivating theme: ecology and the recycling of physical and sonorous waste.]]>
Concerts
23:00
Artificerie Almagià
 
Friday 18-06-2010
Tenebræ
left1After the apocalyptic Pietra di diaspro, a cornerstone of the 2007 edition of the Festival, Adriano Guarnieri and Cristina Mazzavillani Muti join forces once again with Tenebræ, moving from Caravaggio’s paintings and Gesualdo’s Responsoria to create a new world of sound out of selected excerpts from the works of Massimo Cacciari, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Trakl. The visionary nature of Tenebræ – which takes the shape of an unprecedented and compelling video-oratorio – transpires both from the powerfully enveloping sound generated by Live Electronics and digital sound spatialisation, and from the polymorphous, giddy, ever-changing visual space created through cutting-edge image processing techniques. venerdì 18 giugno - Teatro Alighieri ore 19.00 “Ex Tenebris ad Lucem” conversazione conMassimo Cacciariingresso libero]]>
Opera
21:00
Teatro Alighieri
 
Saturday 19-06-2010
Tenebræ
left1After the apocalyptic Pietra di diaspro, a cornerstone of the 2007 edition of the Festival, Adriano Guarnieri and Cristina Mazzavillani Muti join forces once again with Tenebræ, moving from Caravaggio’s paintings and Gesualdo’s Responsoria to create a new world of sound out of selected excerpts from the works of Massimo Cacciari, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Trakl. The visionary nature of Tenebræ – which takes the shape of an unprecedented and compelling video-oratorio – transpires both from the powerfully enveloping sound generated by Live Electronics and digital sound spatialisation, and from the polymorphous, giddy, ever-changing visual space created through cutting-edge image processing techniques. venerdì 18 giugno - Teatro Alighieri ore 19.00 “Ex Tenebris ad Lucem” conversazione conMassimo Cacciariingresso libero]]>
Opera
21:00
Teatro Alighieri
Saturday 19-06-2010
Inni del Venerdì Santo e Ufficio delle Tenebre
left1In preconciliar liturgy the nightly office for the Sacred Triduum prescribed that fifteen candles should be lighted in a triangular-shaped candlestick only to be put out one by one until the church plunged into darkness, a darkness resembling mankind’s condition after killing the Son of God. Hence the name – “the office of darkness”. Alessandro Scarlatti honoured this tradition, and to celebrate his 350th anniversary, Sergio Balestracci and La Stagione Armonica will perform his Hymns for Good Friday and the Office of Darkness, probably composed in Rome in 1708 and included in the manuscript “Music for Holy Week” preserved in the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Basilica di San Vitale
 
Sunday 20-06-2010
L'alba di una nuova liturgia
left1If our title, Ex tenebris ad lucem, is loaded with references to the liturgy and the ideas of light as a symbol for Christ and darkness as a symbol for Evil or the world without Christ, our path intends to retrace the terms of this conflict within the double frame of history and contemporaneity. In the dark ages of Popes and Antipopes, the light of faith has never ceased to shine in the beautiful Mass of the code of Sainte-Anne d’Apt. The great creative turmoil of Palestrina and Counter-Reformation polyphonists is the expression of a recovered light. Two events will celebrate Light coming to the world through its intermediary, Mary. And finally, Orlando di Lasso’s Missa pro defunctis will bring relief to the victims of recent earthquakes: l’Aquila, Haiti and Chile.]]>
Sunday Liturgies
11:00
Sant'Apollinare Nuovo
Sunday 20-06-2010
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
direttore Charles Dutoit
left1The magic of an orchestra and fairy-tale evocation; the gestural expressiveness of sound and an oriental narrating spell: the fabulous visions from One Thousand and One Nights in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Shéhérazade form a direct link to the spontaneity and incomparable originality of Stravinsky’s L’oiseau de feu, which charmed the Parisian audience twenty years later. It was the Russian spirit of St. Petersburg’s musical outskirts breaking into the heart of modern Europe. This is now one of Charles Dutoit’s favourite grounds. After a degree in Maths, Dutoit’s dazzling career brought him under the auspices of Karajan, led him to Montreal for more than twenty years, then to Philadelphia, Tokyo, Paris and now to the rostrum of one of the leading British orchestras, the Royal Philharmonic.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
 
Monday 21-06-2010
Schwab
left1Austrian playwright Werner Schwab died on New Year’s Day 1994, at the age of 35, of an alcohol overdose. Difficult, desecrating, ferocious. His plays resemble him – this is what we think when we see them. They are imbued with cynicism and disillusionment, and leave no space for hope to the world they portray, the world of the deepest and most conservative province, mean and miserable in its pretence of being respectable and middleclass. Schwab started from crude reality and allowed no intercession, from the monsters we all carry within to the anthropophagous violence always on the point of bursting out. This is the world Maurizio Lupinelli portrays in his homage to Schwab performed by Nerval Teatro, a company starring actors with different abilities.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:00
Teatro Rasi
Monday 21-06-2010
Vespro della Beata Vergine
left1In November 1732 a violent earthquake shook Naples, and Pergolesi was called to implore divine mercy: his famous Saint Emidius Mass and several psalms and antiphonies were performed in the small church of S. Maria della Stella. On this occasion Dixit Dominus, Confitebor tibi and Salve regina were also composed as parts of some hypothetical vespers. But mystery still enshrouds Pergolesi’s “case”: undisputedly great in his own times for his transparent and immediate music, the composer prematurely died inspiring a train of followers and imitators who soon made him an idol and left a multitude of forgeries on which musicologists still debate, leaving ample space for bold interpretation.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Sant'Apollinare Nuovo
 
Tuesday 22-06-2010
Evita
left1Evita undoubtedly represents one of the milestones in the history of musical theatre, and will be performed in its original London West End version. Evita – one of the masterpieces of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the author of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats – concentrates on the exciting and irresistible career of Maria Eva Duarte de Perón – the charismatic Argentinian first-lady whose vicissitudes moved the hearts and imagination of the world in the aftermath of World War II. From her humble origins to her rise to power as Juan Domingo Perón’s wife, till her untimely death, the musical portrays both the veneration of her people and the ironical, disillusioned point of view of an exceptional observer and narrator: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as Che Guevara.www.kenwright.com]]>
Special Events
21:00
Pala Credito di Romagna, Forlì
 
Wednesday 23-06-2010
Evita
left1Evita undoubtedly represents one of the milestones in the history of musical theatre, and will be performed in its original London West End version. Evita – one of the masterpieces of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the author of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats – concentrates on the exciting and irresistible career of Maria Eva Duarte de Perón – the charismatic Argentinian first-lady whose vicissitudes moved the hearts and imagination of the world in the aftermath of World War II. From her humble origins to her rise to power as Juan Domingo Perón’s wife, till her untimely death, the musical portrays both the veneration of her people and the ironical, disillusioned point of view of an exceptional observer and narrator: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as Che Guevara.www.kenwright.com]]>
Special Events
21:00
Pala Credito di Romagna, Forlì
Wednesday 23-06-2010
Fennesz + Lillevan
left1Though hidden under layers of electronic throbs and digital alchemy, a performance by Fennesz is an ancestral rite, an almost metaphysical process in which Music, or maybe the essence of Music, reaches the darkest corners of our perception. After his start as a punk-rock guitarist, Austrian Christian Fennesz became a key figure of glitch-influenced electronic music, admired by Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian for the dreamlike quality of his experimental sound. His collaboration with German video-artist Lillevan will be a keystone, a fusion of moving images to the sound of music, a contamination of different languages that sets the necessary course of world electronic avant-garde.]]>
Concerts
21:30
Rocca Brancaleone
 
Thursday 24-06-2010
Evita
left1Evita undoubtedly represents one of the milestones in the history of musical theatre, and will be performed in its original London West End version. Evita – one of the masterpieces of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the author of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats – concentrates on the exciting and irresistible career of Maria Eva Duarte de Perón – the charismatic Argentinian first-lady whose vicissitudes moved the hearts and imagination of the world in the aftermath of World War II. From her humble origins to her rise to power as Juan Domingo Perón’s wife, till her untimely death, the musical portrays both the veneration of her people and the ironical, disillusioned point of view of an exceptional observer and narrator: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as Che Guevara.www.kenwright.com]]>
Special Events
21:00
Pala Credito di Romagna, Forlì
Thursday 24-06-2010
Claire-Obscure
left1Claire-Obscure: light and gloom, sound and silence, life and death... These are the extremes of a single phrasing, a single breathing: everything exists in the space that separates them; everything is consumed in that very space, where, once again, Micha van Hoecke finds the germ of his invention, breathing life into a new creation that feeds on the suggestion of contraries. He plunges into the depths of the music of Schubert, Der Tod und Maiden (orchestrated by Mahler) and of Schönberg, Verklärte Nacht. These two works encompass the extremes, the beginning and the end of one emotional atmosphere, the expressive urge that infuses Romanticism, from Schubert’s fresh melancholy to the worn-out solitude of a crepuscular world.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:00
Teatro Alighieri
 
Friday 25-06-2010
Evita
left1Evita undoubtedly represents one of the milestones in the history of musical theatre, and will be performed in its original London West End version. Evita – one of the masterpieces of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the author of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats – concentrates on the exciting and irresistible career of Maria Eva Duarte de Perón – the charismatic Argentinian first-lady whose vicissitudes moved the hearts and imagination of the world in the aftermath of World War II. From her humble origins to her rise to power as Juan Domingo Perón’s wife, till her untimely death, the musical portrays both the veneration of her people and the ironical, disillusioned point of view of an exceptional observer and narrator: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as Che Guevara.www.kenwright.com]]>
Special Events
21:00
Pala Credito di Romagna, Forlì
 
Saturday 26-06-2010
I demòni
left111 a.m to 11 p.m. Nine full hours of play which will become 12 with a couple of meal breaks. This will be the total length of Peter Stein’s Demons, based on Dostoevsky’s novel. Stein is not new to such marathons, and stages a Fitzcarraldo-style challenge to portray the entirety of Dostoevsky’s Demons, which the Russian novelist saw in the illnesses, deformities and follies of a generation who had lost its faith to become victim of ideology. An indifferent, disoriented generation, at the same time nihilist and full of joy of living and enthusiasm for a new world, a new man. And also a visionary description of the consequences of modern thought – materialist, rational and nihilist, questioning everything.]]>
Drama & Ballet
11:00
Palazzetto dello Sport Angelo Costa
Saturday 26-06-2010
Evita
left1Evita undoubtedly represents one of the milestones in the history of musical theatre, and will be performed in its original London West End version. Evita – one of the masterpieces of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the author of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats – concentrates on the exciting and irresistible career of Maria Eva Duarte de Perón – the charismatic Argentinian first-lady whose vicissitudes moved the hearts and imagination of the world in the aftermath of World War II. From her humble origins to her rise to power as Juan Domingo Perón’s wife, till her untimely death, the musical portrays both the veneration of her people and the ironical, disillusioned point of view of an exceptional observer and narrator: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as Che Guevara.www.kenwright.com]]>
Special Events
21:00
Pala Credito di Romagna, Forlì
Saturday 26-06-2010
La Gran Partita
left1The manuscript of Serenade KV370a bears the subtitle Gran Partita, but not in Mozart’s hand. The composition has a more complex and imposing structure than what we usually call “serenade”, and was scored for a peculiarly rich ensemble of 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 basset horns, 4 horns and a double bass. Mozart was probably working under the influence of the orchestra of Mannheim: we know for sure that Quartet KV368b for oboe and string trio was composed for the Mannheim oboist, Friedrich Ramm, and that one of Ramm’s apprentices, F. E. Thurner, transcribed for 2 oboes the Sonata KV374b, originally scored for fortepiano and violin. Hans-Jörg Schellenberger and Martin Gabriel, two great European orchestral soloists, will resume the Mannheimer great tradition.]]>
Concerts
21:30
Chiostro Biblioteca Classense
 
Sunday 27-06-2010
I demòni
left111 a.m to 11 p.m. Nine full hours of play which will become 12 with a couple of meal breaks. This will be the total length of Peter Stein’s Demons, based on Dostoevsky’s novel. Stein is not new to such marathons, and stages a Fitzcarraldo-style challenge to portray the entirety of Dostoevsky’s Demons, which the Russian novelist saw in the illnesses, deformities and follies of a generation who had lost its faith to become victim of ideology. An indifferent, disoriented generation, at the same time nihilist and full of joy of living and enthusiasm for a new world, a new man. And also a visionary description of the consequences of modern thought – materialist, rational and nihilist, questioning everything.]]>
Drama & Ballet
11:00
Palazzetto dello Sport Angelo Costa
Sunday 27-06-2010
E la luce venne nelle tenebre
left1If our title, Ex tenebris ad lucem, is loaded with references to the liturgy and the ideas of light as a symbol for Christ and darkness as a symbol for Evil or the world without Christ, our path intends to retrace the terms of this conflict within the double frame of history and contemporaneity. In the dark ages of Popes and Antipopes, the light of faith has never ceased to shine in the beautiful Mass of the code of Sainte-Anne d’Apt. The great creative turmoil of Palestrina and Counter-Reformation polyphonists is the expression of a recovered light. Two events will celebrate Light coming to the world through its intermediary, Mary. And finally, Orlando di Lasso’s Missa pro defunctis will bring relief to the victims of recent earthquakes: l’Aquila, Haiti and Chile.]]>
Sunday Liturgies
11:30
Basilica di Sant'Agata Maggiore
Sunday 27-06-2010
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
left1Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre owes its name to a Chinese ritual dance, the “Cloud Gate”. The company’s twenty-four dancers are skilled in Tai Chi Tao Yin, meditation, the martial arts, Chinese Opera, modern and classical dance and calligraphy. The result is a clever mix of dance techniques and Eastern and Western theatre. The company was founded in 1973 by choreographer Lin Hwai-Min, who, in Songs of the Wanderers (1994), evokes the cheerful memories of Buddha’s trip to Bodh Gaya, leading the audience into a great purification rite. It is a work on asceticism, on the peaceful flowing of a river, on the research for quietness, while the stage is modelled into a landscape by tons of rice.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
Sunday 27-06-2010
Broadcast & The Focus Group
left1The best-kept secret (in Italy) of the planet’s indie-tronic avant-garde comes from Birmingham. Broadcast, on the stage for more than ten years, have always led an extremely personal research in the field of pop-rock electronics, winning fans like Flying Lotus and Stereolab. Broadcast’s production strikes its roots into American psychedelic music from the ‘60s, inspiring the vocal style of the group’s leader, Trish Keenan, and the general sound of the band, whose masterpiece mini-album, Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, realised with Focus Group aka their long-time friend Julian House, was The Wire’s top album of 2009.]]>
Concerts
21:30
Rocca Brancaleone
 
Monday 28-06-2010
Teatro Dubrovka di Mosca, 26 ottobre 2002
"Cardo rosso"
left1The red thistle, growing on dry, arid soil, becomes the symbol of a modern tragedy, the Dubrovka theatre crisis in Moscow, 23-26 October 2002. Playwright Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis evokes those tragic days in a choral script where every line oozes with pain. The voices of Chechen widows mingle with the voices of the actresses and audience who were taken hostages, and with those of the mothers of the soldiers sent to fight in Chechnya. It is a woman’s apologue against all kinds of war, violence and abuse. The play will be staged on the lawn of the 1895 shooting range overlooking the Corsini canal, under the big dark eagle that witnessed the training of several Olympic champions – a new restored space is returned to the city.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:30
Vecchio tiro a segno, Darsena di Città
 
Tuesday 29-06-2010
Teatro Dubrovka di Mosca, 26 ottobre 2002
"Cardo rosso"
left1The red thistle, growing on dry, arid soil, becomes the symbol of a modern tragedy, the Dubrovka theatre crisis in Moscow, 23-26 October 2002. Playwright Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis evokes those tragic days in a choral script where every line oozes with pain. The voices of Chechen widows mingle with the voices of the actresses and audience who were taken hostages, and with those of the mothers of the soldiers sent to fight in Chechnya. It is a woman’s apologue against all kinds of war, violence and abuse. The play will be staged on the lawn of the 1895 shooting range overlooking the Corsini canal, under the big dark eagle that witnessed the training of several Olympic champions – a new restored space is returned to the city.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:30
Vecchio tiro a segno, Darsena di Città
 
Wednesday 30-06-2010
Murcof + AntiVJ
left1Murcof’s Mexican origins are important to understand the most elusive aspect of his production: unlike many European artists, who are ready to apply a tech filter to every genre of regional music they come across, Murcof manages to separate his own cultural backgrounds from his experimental approach. This electronic pioneer, accompanied by AntiVj’s spectacular visual show and technical solutions, uses technology to create his fascinating, spiritual and deeply resonant music where silence seems to be entrusted with a crucial mission. After such uncommon collaborations as with ensemble Musiques Nouvelles in the cathedrals of Bruges and Brussels, the international fame of this star of soundscape is now undisputed.]]>
Concerts
21:30
Rocca Brancaleone
 
Thursday 01-07-2010
The Philharmonics
left1What do these young and bold musicians have in common? First of all, they all belong to a legendary orchestra, Wiener Philharmoniker. This should be enough, but there is more: they all want – and are bold enough – to pull down the rigid fences imposed by the rituals of classical repertoires and surrender to the pleasure of lending their talents to the most popular and fascinating scores in a melting pot of styles: klezmer, gipsy and jazz music. Besides, the major composers of the latest two centuries have never escaped their fascination with gipsy colour and virtuosity, or with Afro-American swing. It is this tradition of freedom that the Philharmonics celebrate: Strauss to Corea, passing through Brahms and Ravel.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Teatro Alighieri
 
Friday 02-07-2010
Betulia liberata
left1When, in 1734, Pietro Metastasio wrote Betulia liberata for the Viennese court, the war of the Polish succession was raging, and the army of Charles vi of Habsburg was defeated in Italy. This called for an action of sacred propaganda, which would sing of Judith’s biblical exploits in releasing the city of Betulia from the Assyrian threat, with the final chorus, “Praise be to God who defeated His impious enemies”. Mozart confronted Betulia liberata in 1771, at the age of 15: seventy-three-year-old Metastasio had just completed his swan-song, Ruggiero; the son of Empress Maria Theresa was going to marry Duchess d’Este, and young Mozart would present him with a serenade, Ascanio in Alba, soon after tackling the old poet’s oratory in Padua, now in peaceful times.]]>
Opera
20:30
Teatro Alighieri
Friday 02-07-2010
Rokia Traoré
left1The music of Rokia Traoré strikes roots into Africa, and more specifically into the Mali of her origins, but greatly differs from the music of her more traditional fellow-countrymen by virtue of the very different traditions and cultures she had the chance of meeting. The Malian songwriter follows the classic Western composition method, organizing melodies on her guitar, moving them around and matching music and words (in her mother tongue) that live in mutual symbiosis with the emotions of the musical gesture. See her latest album, Tchamantché, where Traoré lends her soft and gentle voice to all those Africans who daily tackle all basic necessities: drinkable water, food, clothes, shelter.]]>
Concerts
21:30
Darsena dei Magazzini del Sale, Cervia
 
Saturday 03-07-2010
Philharmonia Orchestra
direttore Yuri Temirkanov
left1Yuri Temirkanov, one of the great interpreters of the Russian tradition, born in Caucasus and educated in Petersburg, proposes a programme entirely dedicated to Tchaikovsky. If the composer himself was not satisfied with his Symphony No. 5, which he considered to be “too colourful, massive, insincere, drawn out and on the whole very unsympathetic”, No. 6 Pathétique, which had required a careful orchestration, was instead “the most sincere” of his compositions. It premiered in 1893, just a few days before the death of its author, who thus wrote after the first performance: “Something odd happened with this symphony! It’s not that it displeased, but it produced some bewilderment. As far as I myself am concerned – then I am more proud of it than any of my other works”.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
Saturday 03-07-2010
A Funky Celebration
left1If funk were a person, a celebration by somebody who has dedicated his whole life and soul to it would be a great honour. Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley have been proving this very kind of devotion for almost fifty years. And if their starting point was undoubtedly James Brown, the godfather of funk with whom the two can boast collaboration, it is also true that Brown himself was in turn influenced by Wesley’s trombone and Parker’s baritone saxophone, when he hollered his refrain «Maceo! Blow your horn!». But besides “Sex machine” Brown, these names are now synonyms of funk, together with some others who made the history of the genre: George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Pee Wee Ellis down to Prince.]]>
Concerts
21:30
Darsena dei Magazzini del Sale, Cervia
 
Sunday 04-07-2010
La luce riflessa
left1If our title, Ex tenebris ad lucem, is loaded with references to the liturgy and the ideas of light as a symbol for Christ and darkness as a symbol for Evil or the world without Christ, our path intends to retrace the terms of this conflict within the double frame of history and contemporaneity. In the dark ages of Popes and Antipopes, the light of faith has never ceased to shine in the beautiful Mass of the code of Sainte-Anne d’Apt. The great creative turmoil of Palestrina and Counter-Reformation polyphonists is the expression of a recovered light. Two events will celebrate Light coming to the world through its intermediary, Mary. And finally, Orlando di Lasso’s Missa pro defunctis will bring relief to the victims of recent earthquakes: l’Aquila, Haiti and Chile.]]>
Sunday Liturgies
10:30
Basilica di San Vitale
Sunday 04-07-2010
Betulia liberata
left1When, in 1734, Pietro Metastasio wrote Betulia liberata for the Viennese court, the war of the Polish succession was raging, and the army of Charles vi of Habsburg was defeated in Italy. This called for an action of sacred propaganda, which would sing of Judith’s biblical exploits in releasing the city of Betulia from the Assyrian threat, with the final chorus, “Praise be to God who defeated His impious enemies”. Mozart confronted Betulia liberata in 1771, at the age of 15: seventy-three-year-old Metastasio had just completed his swan-song, Ruggiero; the son of Empress Maria Theresa was going to marry Duchess d’Este, and young Mozart would present him with a serenade, Ascanio in Alba, soon after tackling the old poet’s oratory in Padua, now in peaceful times.]]>
Opera
20:30
Teatro Alighieri
Sunday 04-07-2010
Carlos Acosta & Guests
left1He started dancing on his father’s advice, and has never stopped since. Cuban Carlos Acosta has been performing all over the world as a guest dancer since he was 16. He started his own project, “Carlos Acosta & Guests”, in 2005, with a repertoire including existing and original creations, and starring étoiles and soloists from English National Ballet and Ballet Nacional de Cuba. In 2010 he proposes a new repertoire including “Apollo”, where the pas de deux of Apollo and Terpsichore is an outstanding example of the lucidity and modernity Balanchine brought into the world of dance in the xix century, and a woman’s solo on Piaf’s famous song, “Je ne regrette rien”.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
 
Monday 05-07-2010
Betulia liberata
left1In 1743 Niccolò Jommelli had been on the scene for six years, and was in Padua, setting to music Metastasio’s Demofoonte for the first time: this libretto would accompany him for the rest of his life, and 3 more settings would follow the first one. A year earlier, in Venice, he had confronted his first oratorio on Metastasio’s Isacco figura del Redentore. And Metastasio it was once again when, in 1743, he set to music a rather young and fresh Betulia liberata (written in 1734, the poem had been set to music only 3 times before). The composer was not yet thirty, and his love for Metastasio did not pass unnoticed to the eyes of Johann Adolf Hasse, who recommended him for the position of chapel master at the Ospedale degli Incurabili in Venice, some time around 1743.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Sant'Apollinare in Classe
 
Tuesday 06-07-2010
Betulia liberata
left1When, in 1734, Pietro Metastasio wrote Betulia liberata for the Viennese court, the war of the Polish succession was raging, and the army of Charles vi of Habsburg was defeated in Italy. This called for an action of sacred propaganda, which would sing of Judith’s biblical exploits in releasing the city of Betulia from the Assyrian threat, with the final chorus, “Praise be to God who defeated His impious enemies”. Mozart confronted Betulia liberata in 1771, at the age of 15: seventy-three-year-old Metastasio had just completed his swan-song, Ruggiero; the son of Empress Maria Theresa was going to marry Duchess d’Este, and young Mozart would present him with a serenade, Ascanio in Alba, soon after tackling the old poet’s oratory in Padua, now in peaceful times.]]>
Opera
20:30
Teatro Alighieri
 
Wednesday 07-07-2010
Hamburg Ballett
left1Directed by one of the leading choreographers of our times, John Neumeier, Hamburg Ballett proposes a great triptych, entirely dedicated to Vaslaw Nijinsky and Ballets Russes. They will start with an Italian première: “Vaslaw”, centred on the man and artist who revolutionised the image of a male dancer, promoting a modern conception of choreography. The “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” and “Le Sacre” will follow, celebrating the extraordinary novelty of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris and Europe in a tribute for the centennial of the most influential dance company of the xx century, with the innovative force of the sublime musical inventions of such absolute geniuses as Debussy and Stravinsky.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
 
Thursday 08-07-2010
E' zriz
left1Il ciliegio.Un uomo si era chiuso in casaperché non gli piaceva il mondocon la gente che non credevapiù a niente.Quando si è stancato di starevicino a una candela accesache gli faceva lumedentro la notte di quelle camere,ha aperto una finestrae gli è scoppiato davanti agli occhiun ciliegio in fiore che eracome una nuvola bianca di bellezza;e lui si è messo a piangere dalla contentezzaed è scappato fuori di casaper abbracciare la gente e gli animali.]]>
Special Events
21:30
Rocca Brancaleone
 
Friday 09-07-2010
Notturno
left1“It was usually towards midnight that he gave himself up with the greatest abandon, when the big butterflies of the salon had left […] then he became a poet, and sang the Ossianic loves of the heroes of his dreams.” Thus Berlioz remembers Chopin’s Parisian society gatherings, his romantic complying with the mystery of night as the revealer of most intimate truths. In his Nocturnes, in the unspeakable suggestion of melody, regret and gentleness, sadness and passion gather: in their seeming simplicity, these brief meditations have conquered generations of young maidens. But Chopin also left an indelible memory for many a composer who would also be inspired by the nocturnal element: Nordio and Bacchetti will follow in this wake, touching on Copland's blues and Schnittke’s ironic desecration.]]>
Concerts
21:30
Chiostro Biblioteca Classense
Friday 09-07-2010
La caduta della casa degli Usher
left1What has a forgotten film masterpiece of the ‘20s got to do with the most important Italian indie rock band? As Blake would have it, there is a “fearful symmetry”: after the cool ‘90s, with wonderful albums like Stanze and Lungo i bordi, Massimo Volume broke up in 2002 leaving a gap that could not be filled. But something unexpected happened six years later, when the group agreed to write new music for a 1928 silent film based on a tale by E. A. Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, directed by Jean Epstein and written by young Luis Buñuel, who would soon become a great master of surrealist cinema. On the film’s fantastic and horror images, the sound of Massimo Volume paints the future scenery of a reality transfigured by dream.]]>
Concerts
21:30
Rocca Brancaleone
 
Saturday 10-07-2010
Rumore di acque
left1Rumore di acque is a new project, a black humour monologue by Ravenna-born playwright Marco Martinelli. A mysterious small island lost in that portion of Mediterranean between Europe and Africa that has been the scene of a devastating tragedy for 15 years – on this volcanic, bubbling strip of land, adrift like a raft, only one man lives, a General with demonic features and sparkling eyes. In agreement with an equally mysterious Ministry of Hell, he practices a “policy of acceptance”: the small island is haunted by the invisible ghosts of the dead, the lost at sea, the outcasts. The General welcomes and stows them in his island-raft, each of them is a “number”: lives and deaths are but mere statistics. The General’s rigmarole resounds of the voices of those invisible characters.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:00
Teatro Rasi
Saturday 10-07-2010
Dansgroep Amsterdam
left1Born from the encounter of Krisztina De Châtel and Itzik Galili and their ultra-dynamic, energetic visions, Dansgroep Amsterdam has already imposed itself as one of the leading companies on the international scene. Pulse is pure De Châtel, something one could ever tire of looking at: on the music of Gyorgy Ligeti, the choreography shows strict lines and whirling movements but also passionate solos where the individual breaks out of the collective. The choreography of six, on the notes of Steve Reich, sees the dancers move incessantly, playing with form and space while the stage is broken up into ever-changing smaller segments. After this work on perspective, SUB is a study questioning the role of perception in dance performance, on a score by Michael Gordon.]]>
Drama & Ballet
21:00
Teatro Alighieri
 
Sunday 11-07-2010
Lux Perpetua
left1If our title, Ex tenebris ad lucem, is loaded with references to the liturgy and the ideas of light as a symbol for Christ and darkness as a symbol for Evil or the world without Christ, our path intends to retrace the terms of this conflict within the double frame of history and contemporaneity. In the dark ages of Popes and Antipopes, the light of faith has never ceased to shine in the beautiful Mass of the code of Sainte-Anne d’Apt. The great creative turmoil of Palestrina and Counter-Reformation polyphonists is the expression of a recovered light. Two events will celebrate Light coming to the world through its intermediary, Mary. And finally, Orlando di Lasso’s Missa pro defunctis will bring relief to the victims of recent earthquakes: l’Aquila, Haiti and Chile.]]>
Sunday Liturgies
11:30
Basilica Metropolitana
Sunday 11-07-2010
Rumore di acque
left1Rumore di acque is a new project, a black humour monologue by Ravenna-born playwright Marco Martinelli. A mysterious small island lost in that portion of Mediterranean between Europe and Africa that has been the scene of a devastating tragedy for 15 years – on this volcanic, bubbling strip of land, adrift like a raft, only one man lives, a General with demonic features and sparkling eyes. In agreement with an equally mysterious Ministry of Hell, he practices a “policy of acceptance”: the small island is haunted by the invisible ghosts of the dead, the lost at sea, the outcasts. The General welcomes and stows them in his island-raft, each of them is a “number”: lives and deaths are but mere statistics. The General’s rigmarole resounds of the voices of those invisible characters.]]>
Drama & Ballet
19:00
Teatro Rasi
 
Monday 12-07-2010
Requiem in do minore
direttore Riccardo Muti
left1Eyewitnesses swore that, when Cherubini’s Requiem in C minor was first performed in the abbey of St. Denis, on Jan 21st, 1817, nobody could restrain tears, including the composer and conductor in his formal black suit. The Requiem had been commissioned by Louis xviii to commemorate his wretched brother, Louis xvi, executed more than twenty years earlier. But Cherubini did more than commemorate a dead king: he composed a powerfully dramatic mass that encompasses the pain and hope of humankind. Cherubini, a “conservative revolutionary”, managed to combine freedom of invention with the strictest laws of harmony and counterpoint into a Requiem Beethoven considered a superior composition to the Requiem of Mozart.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
 
Tuesday 13-07-2010
Le Vie dell'Amicizia
left1From that first call, which carried the Ravenna Festival to Sarajevo on the opposite shores of the Adriatic in ‘97, the message of peace and brotherhood, which resounds yearly through our journeys of Friendship, has become one of its indefeasible moments. This year’s journey will take us to Trieste, a frontier city with many languages and cultures and a boundless past where bright memories of literature and poetry are woven into tragic reminiscences from our history of the darkest times of Europe. On the magnificent gulf shared by the three nations of Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, now willing to join in a warm embrace and look together to a brighter future, a sumptuous Requiem will resound, by Beethoven’s most beloved composer.]]>
Concerts
21:00
Trieste
Tuesday 13-07-2010
Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack De Johnette
left1“Music is like a child of yours, it's not an object. And it’s not solid: you perform it and it disappears. My only certainty is that I have done my best in everything I have attempted”: Keith Jarrett always amazes, even when he talks about himself. The great American pianist is back with his legendary Standard Trio for an event where the jazz rate is high. 14 years after the extraordinary concert in the park, we will enjoy another proof of his improvising virtuosity; we will watch him blend into his piano as if it was an extension of his body. The Standard Trio saw the light in 1983, when Jarrett asked bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette to record an album of jazz standard, simply titled “Standards, Volume 1”. Success was immediate.www.keithjarret.itwww.jackdejohnette.com]]>
Concerts
21:00
Palazzo Mauro de André
 

 

 

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