Ravenna Festival

The visionary singer-songwriter from Irpinia, Vinicio Capossela, is back at the Festival with a two-part focus: Il carnevale degli animali e alter bestie d’amore is an upscale project where the famous composition by Camille Saint-Saëns and the songs by Capossela are sewn together in a narrative that leads the audience through the stories of legendary animals, symbols and bestiaries, on a ride with the ‘enchanted beasts’, as the animals performing with acrobats were once called. The second event, La Banda della Posta, sees Capossela with a group of elderly musicians from Calitri performing a repertoire of popular danceable wedding songs.

Carte blanche was given to Giovanni Sollima, a frequent guest of the Ravenna Festival, who, in addition to the Gesualdo appointment, will be the star of La Notte della Taranta: the musician from Palermo will play and conduct an orchestra of over thirty elements in a personal interpretation of pizzica, the popular folk dance from the Salento peninsula.

Both La Notte della Taranta and Capossela’s Banda della Posta will be hosted at Russi, in the picturesque setting of XVII-century Palazzo San Giacomo, the former summer residence of the noble Rasponi family. It is worth noticing how two of this year’s Festival major venues are closely related to this great family, whose story was inextricably interwoven with the city’s for over four centuries. It should also be noted that the Rasponi family was among the promoters of several local cultural institutions, such as the Philharmonic, Drama and Fine Arts Academies and the new Alighieri Theatre.