TAORMINA - '' This concert represents a light in the dark.
We are all very scared.
It is a difficult time that no one would ever have expected.
Music, art, archeology, the beauty of our landscapes can give a little comfort to all of us, forced to stay at home or move with all precautions ''.
Gabriella Tigano, director of the Naxos Taormina Park, thus defines the free appointment that it will be possible to follow in live streaming on the ANSA website on Sunday 15 November at 12, with the historic Plectrum Orchestra Città di Taormina engaged in the Ancient Theater in the performance of a series of famous movie soundtracks.
The show in the fantastic archaeological scenario of the Sicilian city is added to the list of live initiatives promoted by public and private live institutions that ANSA has proposed to relaunch on the web after the closure of cinemas, theaters and concert halls throughout Italy .
The Sunday concert is organized by the Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park together with the TaoArte Sicilia Foundation, the Taormina Film Fest and Videobank technological partner and producer of spectacular aerial shots with drones.
'' We are very happy to be able to organize this event - says Tigano -.
The new closure for the Covid emergency was a very hard blow.
Visitors are the lifeblood for us.
Seeing the deserted Theater is really a pain, especially with the beautiful spring weather these days ''.
In the panorama of difficulties and prohibitions, however, a real breath of fresh air came with the million and 800 thousand euros assigned by Mibact to offset the losses recorded between March and May in the first lockdown.
'' It is very important for us because the Park thrives on ticketing - explains the director -.
When we are closed we have enormous damage.
The Theater of Taormina is visited all year round.
In 2019 we had an exceptional season in the various sites of the Park with one million visitors.
In this period last year we had a sea of people because the Orientals and Americans travel right between November, December and January ''.
The 2020 ravaged by the virus, on the other hand, led to a 70 percent drop in admissions, particularly serious because the previous year visitors from China, Japan, the USA and Australia had caused extraordinary levels of growth.
The Naxos Taormina Park - which in addition to the Theater, includes the Museum and the archaeological area of Naxos and Isolabella - is currently a construction site.
'' We never stop - underlines Gabriella Tigano - and we are taking advantage of this closure to field a series of initiatives that we hope to be able to carry out as soon as it is possible to reopen.
Meanwhile, an exhibition at Palazzo Ciampoli of contemporary art dedicated to Sicilian painters that I don't think we will be able to inaugurate for Christmas, given that no one knows if it will be able to reopen.
Then we work on excavation projects that as a Park we can program independently, and we are arranging all the internal paths of the Ancient theater, in particular the stairways made in the 1950s, now worn and dangerous.
Other interventions concern the restoration of underwater archaeological finds that had been kept for a long time in the deposits and Isolabella with the expertise for the arrangement of the wonderful villa with pavilions ''.
The Orchestra in Plettro Città di Taormina, protagonist of the concert, was born in the early 1900s and made up of musicians who use only plectrum instruments such as mandolin, mandola, mandoloncello, guitar and double bass.
After the Intermezzo from Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana", the program includes a selection of musical masterpieces from the history of cinema, among which C 'once upon a time in the West by Ennio Morricone, Il Gattopardo and Il Padrino by Nino Rota, La vita è bella by Nicola Piovani, Il postino by Luis Bacalov, and Libertango, by Astor Piazzolla.
(HANDLE).