Ravenna Festival

The xxiv edition of Ravenna Festival confirms the formula successfully tested in 2012, extending the programme over the whole year: February saw a preview with Alchemy, the brand-new show by Moses Pendleton’s Momix, which had its world premiere at the Alighieri Theatre; the 'central body' of the Festival will be scheduled from May to mid-July, and then, in November, the "Autumn Trilogy" will focus on the relationship between Giuseppe Verdi and William Shakespeare.

The Theme
Taking up from Verdi's "popular trilogy", which closed the 2012 season, the decision was made to expand on the concept of "popular" by making it one of the Festival’s multi-faceted cores, on which part of the programme will be built. The Festival will thus investigate on the diffusion of Verdi's music outside opera houses, on its transcriptions for a wide range of extremely different instruments (from the piano and its many paraphrases to the "humbler" accordion and ocarina), and also for marching bands.
Another of the Festival's main themes will focus on the recent history of our territory and on its musical "identity", skilfully built into legend: Romagna's folk dance music, the so-called liscio. We'll mention two key figures: Carlo Brighi (aka Zaclèn), who first combined the folk dance music of the rural tradition with the new vogue of partner dances, and Secondo Casadei, who made a legend of the new genre. The dance music of Romagna has a unique and incomparable story, telling the exemplary tale of a land that for 150 years used its dance music as a leitmotiv underpinning the social and collective changes through the tumultuous period of transition to modernization and contemporaneity. Contemporary musicians will be asked to re-interpret the boundless repertoire of Romagna's liscio, "contaminating" it with such musical traditions as that of Balkan brass bands, jazz, klezmer music, etc.
Hence the decision to dedicate a special venue to folk music and dance for the duration of the Festival: a stage, a dance-floor and a "sound box" for the performances of band clubs will be created in the Public Gardens, re-baptized for the occasion “the Open-air Dance-hall in the Gardens”.

The Open-air Dance-hall in the Gardens
The "popular" theme will mainly be developed in a specially set-up space within the Public Gardens, on the background of the elegant Loggetta Lombardesca. This space will evoke the atmosphere of the ancient "dance halls," even rural ones, that marked the pace of social life in Romagna since the late 19th century. Dance (but not only) thus became the seminal element that spurred the characterization of previously unpublished musical repertoires that are still surprisingly original and deserving to be rediscovered, at least by the younger generations.
The intention is that of reviving tradition leaving aside all philological ideology, since this tradition lives on today in the very places where it was born and miraculously survives. This is also an attempt to a new reading that allows us to re-live tradition with a fresh approach. "Traditional" music will thus incorporate other languages, like "progressive rock" or jazz (it's worth noting that the "Romagna folklore" was born in the very same years when the 'native' music of Afro-Americans was starting to spread); or it will mix with the folk traditions of the Balkans, or with classic symphonic language, in a sort of musical “hybrid". The figure of Secondo Casadei looms over a series of events in which the folklore of Romagna will confront with other languages. The protagonists, alongside Secondo's heirs and custodians of his 'living' tradition, the Orchestra Grande Evento, will be major Italian jazz musicians (Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia), such giants of popular music as Riccardo Tesi, and accordionist Simone Zanchini, straddling between the two worlds. An important appendix will be dedicated to the Apulian tradition of marching bands, also "contaminated" with jazz or with the ethnic rock of Radiodervish. Some events will focus on the popular roots of much of Verdi's music, bringing it back to the typical performing style of traditional music.

Lyric, Symphonic and Chamber Concerts
Never before had the presence of Riccardo Muti been so central and irreplaceable: this year celebrates the bicentenary of the great patriarch of Italian music, Giuseppe Verdi, who, like no one else, was able to stage the great human passions, making himself universally understood and thus giving the term 'popular' a more catholic and profound meaning. Muti, the supreme interpreter of Verdi's music today, will honour the composer with two concerts: performing under his baton will be the Cherubini Youth Orchestra and the Orchestra and Chorus of the Rome Opera House, with a rendering of Nabucco in concert form.
Symphonic orchestras will then star in four other original proposals, variously connected to the Festival’s theme: the first will see Franz Bartolomey, principal cellist of the Wiener Philharmoniker, in the role of Konzertmeister, leading the orchestra and audience on a fascinating journey on the traces of the waltz within the great symphonic repertoire, spanning from Carl Maria von Weber and Johann Strauss Jr. to the "Strauss from Romagna", Secondo Casadei. The great musician from Sant'Angelo di Gatteo, who had entire generations in Romagna dance, dream and fall in love, will be celebrated in a concert where a traditional Romagna folk orchestra will be complemented by the young musicians of the "Cherubini" in the first ever 'symphonic' transcription of his evergreens. The two other protagonists will be Steve Vai, one of the greatest rock guitarists in the world (and a close collaborator of Frank Zappa) and a great songwriter, Burt Bacharach, onstage with the Youth Orchestra of the Rome Opera House. Three extraordinary guests in the chamber music playbill will be Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich with a programme dedicated to tango, cellist Yo-Yo Ma accompanied by pianist Kathryn Stott, and Iranian pianist Ramin Bahrami with a recital of Bach’s music.

The Friendship Concert Lands in Mirandola
This year the Festival's journey on the Paths of Friendship will touch the area of Emilia-Romagna struck by the 2012 earthquakes. In the heart of Mirandola, Riccardo Muti, his 'Cherubini Orchestra', a choir and soloists will perform Verdi's most famous arias for the victims of the quakes. Local musicians and singers will share the spirit of the Paths of Friendship concerts, joining in a great choral and instrumental ensemble conducted by Riccardo Muti.

Sacred Music in the Basilicas
The usual sacred music concerts and Sunday liturgies in the Byzantine basilicas will all be focused on the relationship between folk and classical music. In "From Notre Dame to Montiferru", Paolo Da Col’s vocal ensemble Odhecaton and Su Concordu 'e su Rosariu di Santu Lussurgiu will alternate Medieval and Renaissance polyphonies by Pérotin, Desprez and Guillaume de Machaut to ancient Sardinian polyphonies. The Missa Luba (featured in Pasolini's The Gospel According To St. Matthew) and the Misa Criolla are the touching outcomes of cultural syncretism in Argentinian and Congolese folk traditions.
In the year dedicated to cultural exchange between Italy and Hungary, the Byzantine background of San Vitale will provide a stage for Ephrem the Syrian’s Male Choir, the rigorous performers of Byzantine liturgical music and of the choral repertoire of Hungarian composers, most notably Béla Bartók.

Music in the Cloisters
In the striking setting of the Cloisters of the Classense Library Vincenzo Capezzuto, accompanied by ensemble Soqquadro Italiano, will propose an itinerary along four centuries of Italian songs: their recital, "From Monteverdi to Mina," will trace the points of continuity between Italian contemporary music and the distant, almost legendary world of Baroque. Argentinian pianist Hugo Aisemberg, a major connoisseur of Astor Piazzolla's work, will dedicate his programme to the tango, spanning from the milonga to the music of Piazzolla, performing his lesser-known pages with the accompaniment by a string quintet. A recital of Croatian pianist Martina Filjak will specifically focus on the presence of popular themes in the piano repertoire of the Romantic period and the 20th century.

Contemporary and Other Music
If there ever was a composer who could, like few others, mix "high" and "low", "cult", "pop" and "folklore" music, it was Luciano Berio, the tenth anniversary of whose death is celebrated this year. Nextime Ensemble and Danilo Grassi, in collaboration with Tempo Reale—the electro-acoustic research centre founded in Florence by Berio himself, will propose a programme that summarizes the great composer's main lines of research, from Naturale, incorporating work songs, love songs, Sicilian lullabies and the field recordings of Celano, the last genuine Sicilian storyteller, to Cries of London, a short cycle of seven vocal pieces the texts of which are compiled from the well-known cries of Old London street vendors. We Want Michael, a project by Italy’s jazz veteran Enrico Rava, celebrates the hidden beauty and unsuspected complexity of Michael Jackson's music, placing it into proper perspective, breaking away from the false stereotypes that often surrounded the King of Pop.
Straight from the adrenaline rush of London’s music clubs, here’s PB Underground, a super band of extraordinary jazz, soul and funk musicians for an unbelievable dance party. Pursuing in the spirit of proposing innovative events in the fields of experimentation, electronics and indie rock, Tame Impala, a psychedelic rock band from Australia, will perform for the first time in Italy on the stage of the Rocca Brancaleone.

A Festival of Dance
The dance playbill includes several events of exceptional international importance: following Alchemy by Momix, May will see the return of British choreographer and director Matthew Bourne and his company, New Adventures, together with the award-winning costume designer Lez Brotherson: their latest creation is Sleeping Beauty, on the immortal music of Tchaikovsky.
Also from London’s Sadler's Wells is a Festival exclusive, Ivan Putrov’s Men In Motion, a gala celebration of male dancers, showcasing choreography made by and for men over 100 years. One of the greatest international contemporary choreographers, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (whose splendid Sutra we still remember), will offer his interpretation of the tango in Milonga - A Tango Project. The tango will be transfigured into a quite contemporary dimension where Sidi Larbi, along with a cast of selected Argentinian dancers and musicians, will capture the atmosphere and the essence of the Milonga as well as the Buenos Aires new wave of tango fusion dance.
For the first time in Italy, the Mark Morris Dance Group will present some of the American choreographer’s finest creations on a live performance of music by Bach, Hummel, Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison. Live music is strictly integral to all of Morris's work, since he made a commitment to feature live music as the essential complement to his idea of dance.
Ravenna Festival will also be a partner of the Ric.Ci. project (Reconstruction Italian Contemporary Choreography, Eighties-Nineties), created by Marinella Guatterini. The project will stage three seminal creations of Italian post-modern dance: Duetto by Virgilio Sieni and Alessandro Certini, La Boile de Neige by Fabrizio Monteverde and Calore by Enzo Cosimi. In the line that descends from these authors is Simona Bertozzi, who will star in her own choreography on music by Arcangelo Corelli in the third centenary of his death.
A particular focus will be dedicated to new African dance with young South African dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo, who will present her original and iconoclastic version of Swan Lake, and with Kenyan dancer-choreographer Anuang'A who, in his Feelings & Voices, will stage a group of Maasai warriors. They will channel the faith and strength of the initiation rites of the highland people living on the Kenya-Tanzania border into gestures and vocals of great primitive power.

A Magical Place: Palazzo San Giacomo, Russi
The ample lawn of Palazzo San Giacomo is now one of the Festival’s 'classic' venues. This magical place, in the rural surroundings of the River Lamone, is especially suitable as a venue for folk events because of its informal atmosphere. This year, in close connection with the Festival's theme—which has a focus on popular music from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, including the Jewish tradition of klezmer music, several international artists and projects will be proposed in Italy for the first time: Transglobal Underground Meets Fanfara Tirana, American klezmer band Klezmatics and Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar from Serbia.

Autumn Trilogy: "Verdi & Shakespeare"
The "Autumn Trilogy" project returns with a set of three original opera productions created, directed and coordinated by Cristina Mazzavillani Muti and her masterful crew of cutting-edge sound and scenes technicians, in a sort of “workshop” that has already resulted in the discovery and promotion of several new talents.
To close the celebrations for the bicentenary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth, the Festival will pay him a tribute by staging his Shakespearean operas—Macbeth, Othello and Falstaff, where the theatrical genius of the Italian musician was enhanced by his encounter with the greatest playwright in history.