Lights from the Divina Commedia before and after Dante
Luci dalla Divina Commedia prima e dopo Dante
Teatro Alighieri |
27 July 2021 | at 9:30 PM
Lumina in tenebris
Lights from the Divina Commedia before and after Dante
by and with Elena Bucci and Chiara Muti
based on the Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri
lighting design Vincent Longuemare sound design and dramaturgy Raffaele Bassetti
production Ravenna Festival in collaboration with Compagnia Le belle bandiere
In the dark backstage, in the wings, behind the backdrops, cracks, openings and gaps are disclosed and hidden… A light flashes, disappears, is transformed: apparitions are evoked by the voices of two white figures mirroring each other. Guardians, ghosts, souls. Two actresses who have already and repeatedly crossed paths. Now, again, they meet in the grandiose theatre of Dante’s Comedy, a map of lights designed to guide us through the darkness caused by discord and ignorance, arrogance and greed. Big lights, small lights: useful tools to push our way through the “forest dark”.
Lights that inspired Dante, and were inspired by him: they invite us to listen to the spirit of hope that dwells in each of us, a spirit that creates but does not destroy, welcomes but never rejects.
The Night of Prog UNO nel Tutto
Russi, Palazzo San Giacomo |
24 July 2021 | at 9:30 PM
The Night of Prog UNO nel Tutto
dedicated to Danilo Rustici
Stefano Pilia (Afterhours) guitar Roberto Dell’Era (Afterhours) bass and main vocals Enrico Gabrielli (Calibro 35) keyboards, flutes, and vocals Enzo Vince Vallicelli (Uno) drumkit and vocals and Sara Zaccarelli vocals
Italian premiere
“Is there a drummer in the house?” This was the question Danilo Rustici asked after Tony Esposito stormed off the stage where two former members of Osanna were trying to launch their new project, Uno. It was a life-changing moment for Vince Vallicelli, the Romagna-born drummer of Hellza Poppin, who had learned the tricks of the trade with Secondo Casadei and was now ready to join the big league of Italian progressive rock. The experience of Uno was short-lived and resulted in just one album, but generated legions of enthusiastic fans. Among them is the extraordinary composer and multi-instrumentalist Enrico Gabrielli who, with two other members of Afterhours, now enthusiastically re-proposes the music of Uno, not to “slavishly” repeat it, but rather to start anew from its creative energy and build a completely new project, in step with the times but deeply respecting the legacies of a mythical past.
music by Guiraut de Bornehl, Arnault Daniel and other authors
The journey of the Micrologus Ensemble starts from afar, but leads right into the heart of the Comedy. A journey that revives the sounds of the Middle Ages, combining a rigorous study of the ancient manuscripts with a meticulous attention to folk music and iconographic sources. And thus, the sacred songs collected in the “Laudario di Cortona” combine with the dance music and love poems of such troubadours as Arnault Daniel, whom Dante met in Purgatory, or Bernart de Ventadorn and Marcabru. Moving from the trumpets, bells, drums and shawms evoked in Inferno, we get to the songs expressly mentioned by the Poet—like the famous “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona”—and to the songs of praise echoing in Paradiso. Finally, we get back to earth with the madrigals and ballads popular at the court of the della Scala family, in Verona, where Dante found refuge.
Music and cinema Inferno 2021 a movie by Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro (1911)
music and sound design Edison Studio visuals Salvatore Insana with Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli
Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Alessandro Cipriani live electronics
restored version by Cineteca di Bologna
Hordes of bat-like demons wielding sharp pitchforks; legions of Heaven’s pure souls floating in the sky; Paolo and Francesca gliding down from on high and then suspended in mid-air; Bertrand de Born holding up his severed head, and a gigantic soul-devouring Lucifer. In 1911, two pioneering directors adapted Dante and Virgil’s journey into the first full-length feature film in the history of Italian cinema, and they certainly spared no expense on special effects. Inspired by the famous engravings by Gustave Doré, the film was an unprecedented colossal: 3 years to make, a cast of 150, 100 sets and a huge box office success in Europe and the US. Edison Studio have now put their skills, expertise and live electronics technology at the service of a “perfect” soundtrack for the most visionary of Italian silent films.
organisation and communication Maria Donnoli artwork Marco Smacchia
coproduction E Production / Menoventi, Ravenna Festival, Operaestate Festival Veneto
To this day, Vladimir Mayakovsky’s death probably remains the most exciting cold case in Russian literature. On April 14, 1930, the leading poet of the Russian Revolution shot himself through the heart, for reasons that were never clarified. Political pressure? Intellectual isolation? A broken heart? Serena Vitale, one of the most important Italian Slavists, has written a successful book on this mystery, The Deceased Hated Gossip, whose title quotes a famous line from the poet’s suicide note. Vitale’s complex investigation has inspired Menoventi, who now adapt for the stage the poet’s mysterious end. They will propose a very peculiar work, based on the interplay of noir and crime story, where hypotheses, perspectives and testimonies reflect one another in a fantastic game of mirrors.
concept and curatorship Davide Sacco and Agata Tomšič / ErosAntEros
script Ian De Toffoli dramaturgy Agata Tomšič direction and music and video design Davide Sacco with Hervé Goffings, Sanders Lorena, Marco Lorenzini, Djibril Mbaye, Agata Tomšič, Emanuela Villagrossi costume design Laura Dondoli technical team, set production, and costume-making Fondazione Luzzati – Teatro della Tosse
production Fondazione Luzzati – Teatro della Tosse, TNL – Théâtre National du Luxembourg, Ravenna Festival, ErosAntEros – POLIS Teatro Festival in collaboration with Fondazione Campania dei Festival – Campania Teatro Festival in residence at Teatro della Toscana, TNL – Théâtre National du Luxembourg, OTSE – Officine Theatrikès Salento Ellàda, Tempo Reale with the support of Comune di Ravenna, Regione Emilia-Romagna with the patronage of Pietro Valenti, Ruth Heynen, Silvia Pasello, Silvia Lodi,Remo Ceccarelli, Maria Luisa Caldognetto, Eugenio Giorgetta, all’Istituto Universitario Europeo, alCentro di Micro-BioRobotica dell’Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, a“Passaparola”e a tutte le persone intervistate, per aver nutrito il percorso di creazione dello spettacolo; a Giuseppe Bellosiper la consulenza sul romagnolo
The profoundly “political” nature of the research carried out by ErosAntEros does not run short in this new project, centred on the eminently political and pressing theme of borders and their complex meaning. Confiniis the result of a project started in 2018 by a team of international artists (like the young Luxembourg-based playwright Ian De Toffoli and actor Marco Lorenzini). Starting from the migration of Italian miners to the coal basins of northern Europe in the 1950s, the work focuses on the thorny issues of our ramshackle European Union, with intriguing forays into “future history”.
All centres on a few fundamental questions: what is a border? What is it that really separates men? And why, 70 years after the first European economic agreements, do we still not have a common political vision?
Tribute to Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) for the 100th anniversary of his birth
Rocca Brancaleone |
13 July 2021 | at 9:30 PM
Tribute to Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) for the 100th anniversary of his birth Romance del diablo
Marco Albonetti soprano saxophone and saxophone Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana
Astor Piazzolla Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas Romance del Diablo Oblivion*
Años de Soledad Libertango
orchestration by Marco Albonetti and Pablo Ziegler*
Astor Piazzolla’s music feeds on contamination, which is why purists call him “the tango killer”. But his original sin was merely the assimilation of the various influences of his multifaceted land, built on the nostalgic dreams of the emigrants. His “Nuevo Tango” incorporates elements from jazz and classical music, in an unprecedented richness of colours. As he explained, “I had two great teachers: Nadia Boulanger and Alberto Ginastera. A third one was Buenos Aires”. His Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, an impression of the four seasons in Buenos Aires, are the Argentinian answer to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In Marco Albonetti’s arrangement, the saxophone takes the place of the bandoneón, and gives a new voice to the feeling of time of the Porteños, those born in Buenos Aires, Piazzolla’s secret teachers.
The Paradiso Valentin Silvestrov Kyiv Chamber Choir
Basilica di Sant’Apollinare in Classe |
09 July 2021 | at 9:30 PM
New Music for Dante The Paradiso Kyiv Chamber Choir Mykola Hobdych conductor
Valentin Silvestrov In Memoriam (2020)
for acapella choir world premiere
O luce etterna (2020)
version for acapella choir and piano world premiere commissioned by Ravenna Festival
Valentin Silvestrov’s poetic sky is ablaze with two polar stars, Dante Alighieri and Taras Ševčenko, whose voices, however distant in time and space, did something similar in creating new languages: as Dante invented Italian poetry seven hundred years ago, Ševčenko founded modern Ukrainian literature in the XIX century. These two stars light up the new opera that the Ravenna Festival has commissioned from the Ukrainian composer: O luce etterna, a cantata in ten acts, mainly inspired by Dante’s Paradiso but also incorporating Ševčenko’s poem Evening. The Cherry Orchard. The two languages will be brought even closer by Silvestrov’s decision of using the Ukrainian translation of the Divine Comedy, released in 2015.
Basilica di San Francesco |
05 July 2021 | at 9:30 PM
Dante Nova
The music in the Commedia and the Ars Nova
La Fonte Musica Michele Pasotti lute and conduction Elio De Capitani narrator
Francesca Cassinari, Alena Dantcheva, Alice Borciani sopranos
Gianluca Ferrarini, Massimo Altieri tenors
Marco Scavazza baritone
Matteo Bellotto basso
Efix Puleo vielle for the arm
Teodoro Baù vielle for the leg
Nathaniel Wood slide trumpet
Ermes Giussani trombone
Federica Bianchi organ and clavicymbalum
From the wailing cries and silences of Inferno to the angelic concerts of Paradiso, these programmes revisit the pages of the Divine Comedy where music resounds. Dante wrote his Comedy around the time when Philippe de Vitry and Johannes de Muris were codifying a new musical style in their respective treatises, both entitled Ars Nova Musicæand published just before Dante’s death. They introduced a different notation system and different stylistic traits, which distinguished the new style from the music of the past, both in France and in Italy. A rich and carefully selected proposal now comes from La Fonte Musica, whose artistic imperative is a “return to the sources”, the roots of the music composed during the transition from the middle ages to humanism.
Basilica di San Francesco |
06 July 2021 | at 9:30 PM
Dante Nova
The music in the Commedia and the Ars Nova
La Fonte Musica Michele Pasotti lute and conduction Elio De Capitani narrator
Francesca Cassinari, Alena Dantcheva, Alice Borciani sopranos
Gianluca Ferrarini, Massimo Altieri tenors
Marco Scavazza baritone
Matteo Bellotto basso
Efix Puleo vielle for the arm
Teodoro Baù vielle for the leg
Nathaniel Wood slide trumpet
Ermes Giussani trombone
Federica Bianchi organ and clavicymbalum
From the wailing cries and silences of Inferno to the angelic concerts of Paradiso, these programmes revisit the pages of the Divine Comedy where music resounds. Dante wrote his Comedy around the time when Philippe de Vitry and Johannes de Muris were codifying a new musical style in their respective treatises, both entitled Ars Nova Musicæand published just before Dante’s death. They introduced a different notation system and different stylistic traits, which distinguished the new style from the music of the past, both in France and in Italy. A rich and carefully selected proposal now comes from La Fonte Musica, whose artistic imperative is a “return to the sources”, the roots of the music composed during the transition from the middle ages to humanism.
