The Ravenna Festival restarts, 40 events in safety

     The 31st edition of the Ravenna Festival, the first without the artistic direction of Cristina Mazzavillani Muti, is now honorary president, will open on June 21 with the concert of the Cherubini Youth Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti. A program of about 40 events scheduled until July 30 in compliance with the rules imposed by the Covid emergency, hosted in the symbolic place of the Rocca Brancaleone, a theater that in the distant 1990s hosted the historic inaugural concert of the Festival also directed by Riccardo Muti . As then, Mozart's notes will resonate with the famous Symphony No. 41 and some vocal pages sung by the soprano Rosa Feola. Riccardo Muti and his orchestra, which have always been the pillars of the event, will then return on 3 July for the usual concert of Friendship among peoples, dedicated this year to Syria and repeated on 5 in Paestum: together with the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra they will perform Beethoven's Eroica.
     Muti will then return on July 12 with a program entirely dedicated to Dvorák composed of the Cello Concerto (soloist Tamás Varga, long first cello of the Wiener Philharmoniker) and from the symphony Dal Nuovo Mondo. The Cherubini Orchestra will also be conducted by Valery Gergiev on June 28, in the Third Concert (pianist Beatrice Rana) and in the Pastoral Symphony, a tribute to Beethoven for the 250 years since its birth.
    To complete the symphonic calendar, the Budapest Festival Orchestra with its founder Ivan Fischer will arrive on 1 July with music by Wagner, Britten and Haydn. There will be more refined proposals such as Haendel's oratory 'The Triumph of Time and Disillusionment' with the Byzantine Academy.
    Presented by the superintendent of Ravenna Manifestations, Andrea de Rosa, and by the mayor of Ravenna, Michele De Pascale, the 2020 edition of the Festival will expand to the province with some appointments in the wider Pavaglione di Lugo and Cervia, thus expanding the audience of 300 spectators which for security reasons can house the Rocca Brancaleone.
"In spite of the restrictions imposed and the contraction of the places, - it has been underlined - we have kept low prices, from 5 to 40 euros, trying not to let the cost of the crisis fall on the public".
Always a multidisciplinary event, Ravenna Festival opens again this year to dance, theater, cinema and figurative arts. So among the many other events on the bill there are two productions at the debut, imagined during the lockdown: 'Duets and Solos', union between music and dance, with the cellist Mario Brunello, Beatrice Rana and some étoiles of the Hamburg Ballet, from Opera of Paris and the Berlin Opera, and 'There are days that don't happen', text by Valerio Cappelli on virtual affects in times of pandemic, interpreted by Sergio Castellitto and Isabella Ferrari with the unreleased music by Ennio Morricone.
    The theater section also includes the participation of some local companies such as the Teatro delle Albe, Fanny & Alexander and Menoventi. In a year full of anniversaries the tributes to three characters who photograph the essence of Romagna could not be missing: Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra and Pellegrino Artusi. The 80 years of Mina will be remembered by Danilo Rea, those of John Lennon by Sarah Jane Morris; then a memory of Luis Bacalov with Maria Grazia Cucinotta and Vittorio De Scalzi of the New Trolls. Among the many other guests, there are Stefano Bollani, Vinicio Capossela, Brunori Sas, Neri Marcoré, Giovanni Sollima, Ivano Marescotti, Massimo Gramellini, Paolo Fresu, Ilaria Capua, Gad Lerner and the architect Stefano Boeri.
    The screening of the films 'City Lights' by Charlie Chaplin and "Requiem for a Dying Planet" dedicated to Werner Herzog and his composer Ernst Reijseger, with the music performed live, will complete the vast program. The Festival is also preparing a digital platform for the transmission of events that can be used free of charge from home. (HANDLE).