The Virtuoso & Belcanto Festival-2017 China-Europe International Festival.

The Virtuoso & Belcanto Festival will take place in Lucca, a Tuscan city with a unique geographical position. It lies around 80 km. [c. 50 mi.] from the center of Florence, 30 km. [c. 19 mi.] from the center of Pisa and from the Mediterranean seacoast, and has history that goes all the way back to the Roman Empire. 

Screenshot: virtuosobelcanto

 Having stood as an independent republic for many centuries, it is universally considered to be one of the most beautiful Italian cities. 

Completely surrounded by fortress walls dating back to the Renaissance, Lucca has an extraordinary musical history as well, as the birthplace of musicians such as Puccini, Boccherini, Geminiani, and Catalani.

Teatro del Giglio of Lucca

The Virtuoso & Belcanto Festival and Summer Academy is a celebration of the history and musical heritage of the city of Lucca. 

Screenshot: Teatro del Giglio

Famous composers such as Puccini, Boccherini, and Geminiani along with many others, were born within its walls. 

Lucca and its theater also happen to be where Paganini became Paganini.

The Festival seeks to revitalise this unique musical heritage by creating an opportunity for young musicians from all over the world to come together with prominent international artists and teachers.

In this context, of pivotal importance will be the chamber music, in honour of Luigi Boccherini.

The first week of the Festival will be dedicated to the vocal and choral repertoire, seeing the realisation of the 2017 China-Europe International Festival. 

Screenshot: Virtuoso belcanto festival

The success of Virtuoso & Belcanto Festival first edition has led to an important partnership with prestigious Chinese cultural entities, who chose our Festival as their European partner. 

The result of this collaboration is a week entirely devoted to the Italian operatic repertoire, featuring a full schedule made of concerts, competitions, and other activities that will shape connections between Italian and Chinese Academic Institutions.

The programme of the Virtuoso & Belcanto Festival will include a rich series of concerts and presentations, including many performances by guest artists and ensembles in residence, as well as by our students.

The academic programme of the instrumental courses (July 24 – August 5, 2017) comprises two different categories of participation for musicians:

-advanced study of a solo instrument (in private lessons and masterclasses): violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano and fortepiano.

-chamber music study (ensemble coaching sessions, ensemble masterclasses): violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, fortepiano, flute, clarinet, and French horn. (virtuosobelcanto)

Key words: Italy, China, art, festival.

Italy to hold China-Europe Art Festival in 2017

A yearly art festival between China and European countries will begin this year. 

Screenshot: Festival places (Virtuoso &Belcanto Festival)

It is meant to be a platform for cultural exchanges between the East and West.  

The first China-Europe Art Festival will take place in Italy, July 2017 (CCTV.com)


July 16th – 22nd, 2017

A new Festival that binds the new Chinese musical frontier with the great Italian opera tradition in Puccini’s home town. 

The programme is dedicated to a large group of Chinese choristers that come from various university choruses and to a group of individual singers that will be selecting during the months running up to the Festival, all of whom will also be invited to various local events.

Chorus activities will be led by M° Ross Craigimile who is Chorus Master at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania and Guest Chorus Master and Conductor of the Shanghai Opera House Chorus. 

He will prepare a grand final concert studying and preparing the pieces just as one would in the profession, using a series of techniques and the latest methods.

There will be several famous voice teachers and coaches who will prepare individual singers for a competition and final concert in which the jury and public will give prizes.

China-Europe Art Education Forum – July 19th, 2017

This event will take place in order to stimulate an exchange of ideas, teaching methods and research and create a bond between Chinese, Italian and European Institutes and Universities.

China-Europe International Vocal Competition – July 20 / 21, 2017

First round: During the Masterclasses, teachers will select 15 singers to enter the second round.

Second round: July 20th 2017: The 15 candidates will sing one aria from the traditional opera repertoire and the jury will select 5 singers to enter the final round.

Final Vocal Concert – July 21st, 2017:

The final round will take the form of a concert in which internationally renowned singers will also perform. The 5 candidates will perform one aria and the winners will be announced at the end. There will be 3 prizes awarded by the jury and one by the public.

The jury will be composed of internationally famous artists and organisers and might change between one round and the other.

China-Europe International Chorus Competition – July 20th, 2017

Each chorus will perform a programme chosen freely and with a maximum length of 15 minutes. There will be prizes awarded by the jury and public.

The jury will be composed of internationally famous artists and organisers.

The 2017 China- Europe International Art Festival Symphonic Choirs Concert – July 22nd, 2017

Grand Choral-Symphonic Concert.

FACULTY

Chorus 16th – 22nd July

Ross Craigmile

(Chorus Master at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania and Guest Chorus Master and Conductor of the Shanghai Opera House Chorus)

Voice 17th – 19th July

Salvador Carbó

Elena de la Merced

David Rendall

Miquel Ramon

Guests opera singers 17th – 19th July

Giorgio Berrugi     

Elena de la Merced 

Miquel Ramon    

(Source:virtuosobelcanto)

A woman will coach Italian national football team!

In a footballing first, a woman will coach a male outfit in Italy when former player Patrizia Panico takes the helm of the national under-16 team.

Screenshot: New coach Patriza Panico
The Local

Rated the best female footballer from Italy, Panico is assistant for the under-16s but the head coach Daniele Zoratto is set to take over the under-19 side temporarily, propelling her into the top post for a spell.

"There are many walls still to break down," said the 42-year-old Panico of the daily barriers women face in Italy, which lags some other countries in Europe when it comes to equality.

"But this will help them fall."

"To be the first woman to coach a male side is a huge success for me," added Panico, who scored 110 goals for Italy in a mammoth 204 international appearances.

The two games Panico will oversee while Zoratto is away are against Germany on March 22nd and 24th (The Local)

Key words: Italy, football, national team, coach.

Selena Daly on Italian Futurists and its role in shaping Italian society

The Italian Futurists celebrated technology, youth, and violence in their avant-garde works. Selena Daly, a professor and expert on the movement, explains its role in shaping Italian society.

Screenshot: a 1912 photo of the futurists
The Local

This article is based around a transcript of a segment from The Anthill 10: The Future, a podcast from The Conversation. Gemma Ware, society editor at The Conversation and a producer of The Anthill, interviewed Selena Daly, an expert on the Italian Futurists. 

When the Italian journalist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti went off to the frontlines of World War I, he was thrilled to be pedalling there on a bicycle. Back in 1915, bikes were an avant-garde mode of transport – and Marinetti was an avant-garde kind of guy. He’d made waves across Europe a few years earlier when he launched the Futurist Manifesto.

Selena Daly: Marinetti, who was a master at advertising and self-promotion, got the first manifesto published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper Le Figaro in February of 1909. This really was a very bold launch of an artistic and cultural movement at this time and got a lot of attention also around the world.

Selena Daly is a lecturer in Italian studies at University College Dublin and an expert in the Italian Futurists. Marinetti’s vision of the future was built around high praise for technology and the aesthetics of modernity.

SD: So he praised in this manifesto the speeding automobile, steamships, locomotives. All of these technologies that perhaps to our eyes now may seem a little bit quaint but at that time were really at the cutting edge of technology. So very famously, Marinetti in that manifesto praised the speeding automobile as being more beautiful than the famous Greek sculpture the Winged Victory of Samothrace which stands in the Louvre then and still today.

Screenshot: a 1914 design by Antonio Sant'Elia
The Local

It was a movement that began with literature and poetry and spread to sculpture, fine art, music and even textiles. For example, this 1921 piece called Fox-trot Futurist by an Italian composer, Virgilio Mortari, was influenced by the Futurists. Marinetti’s vision was as destructive and provocative as it was creative and forward-thinking.

SD: He felt that Italy as a country was completely weighed down by the baggage of the Renaissance and the baggage of ancient Rome and its classical past. And he really wanted Italy to just stop looking backwards always and instead look to what the future could offer them in terms of inspiration for art and literature. And in that first manifesto he says he wants to rejuvenate Italy which he found very stagnant and therefore he said that everyone should set fire to the libraries, flood the museums and in this way break all links with the past.

With World War I in the offing, Marinetti and his band of followers quickly agitated for Italy to join the fight. They felt that war would help bring their Futuristic vision into being.

SD: One of the most famous slogans that Marinetti coined was in that very first manifesto where he said that he praised war as the “sole hygiene of the world”. The idea there should be a purging war which would rid Italy and Europe of all of its obsession with the past and they could move forward to a brighter future.

It took nine months for Italy’s leaders to agree to join the war – during which time the Futurists campaigned vigorously for intervention. When Italy did enter the war on the side of the Allies in May 1915, Marinetti and his group of fellow Futurists signed up as soon as they could.

SD: They were terribly excited by the bombardments. They found this to be an inspiration also for their art and in very many ways putting into practice what they had preached and what they had thought about and imagined in advance of World War I.

When the war ended in 1918, the Futurists went through an intense period of political engagement, forming the Futurist Political Party – and forming a close alliance with Benito Mussolini and his Fascist movement. The Futurist party wanted to make Italy great again. They wanted a country that was no longer in “servitude to its past” where the only religion was the “religion of tomorrow”. Their manifesto promised revolutionary nationalism, and included ideas such as totally abolishing the senate and the gradual dissolution of the institution of marriage.

SD: But in the end of 1919 there were Italian elections and the Futurists and the Fascists performed disastrously. So they received less than 2% of the vote in Milan and it’s at that point that Marinetti actually decides that parliamentary politics isn’t for him and he withdraws. He disbands the Futurist political party and he withdraws completely from parliamentary politics because he feels disillusioned and he feels that the message that he has isn’t getting through.

Post-1920, Futurism no longer goes down the parliamentary politics route but it was, after 1924, very closely aligned with Mussolini’s Fascist movement. So while they may not have been engaged in parliamentary parties they were very much on the side of the Fascist regime and that didn’t change at all during Marinetti’s lifetime.

Marinetti’s association with Fascism has tainted the Futurists’ legacy ever since.

SD: Obviously some Futurists distanced themselves from the movement because of this alignment with Fascism. But others didn’t. It’s interesting – a lot of the art in the 1930s and some of the 1940s is what can be described as Fascist pro-regime art. There are a lot of portraits of Mussolini done in a Futurist style for example. And the Futurists, while they were never the official state art of Fascism – because Mussolini never wanted to proclaim one art to be the state art of Fascism – the Futurists were still featured at official events and did have this very strong alignment with Musssoini’s regime at that time.

Marinetti’s allegiance to Mussolini went right up to his death in 1944 in Bellagio in the north of Italy, near to the puppet regime run by Mussolini towards the end of World War II.

SD: Because there was such a cult of personality also around Marinetti – and he was really the focal point of the entire movement – it did rather peter out at that stage after his death and then at the end of the war as well. So there were surviving Futurists who did try in the 1940s and 1950s to keep Futurism alive and there was an interest in Futurism most definitely, but it was tainted by Fascism and there was a reluctance in many circles to really address the Futurist art and Futurist literature on its merits because of the shadow of Fascism that was hanging over it.

Italy’s relationship with Futurism is still complicated, but some Futurist images have remained iconic.

SD: There is a sculpture of Boccioni, one of the most famous Futurist artists, actually featured on the Italian Euro 20 cents coin, just to give an indication of how important the Futurist aesthetic is to a vision of modern Italy today. Boccioni, died actually in 1916. He died under arms, he actually fell off his horse in training so he didn’t have the glory of a battlefield death that he may have wished for because he was also very belligerent.

But he was never tainted by Fascism because he died before Fascism actually came into being. So therefore it’s much easier to place a Boccioni sculpture on a Euro coin in Italy because he doesn’t really have those other connotations and other associations with Fascism.

And the Futurists did help shape the way others in the 20th century went on to imagine what the future could look like.

SD: The Futurist aesthetic had a very profound influence on the language of advertising for example in the 20th century. For example, BMW recently said that they were very much influenced by the Futurist aesthetic in the design of one of their cars. There are fashion houses that are still using Futurist prints and Futurist textiles to inspire their collections. There is still an affinity for the Futurist aesthetic even today.

So while Marinetti’s technological, streamlined vision of the future may have been born out of a specific political moment, it has continued to resonate. Even the generic use of the word Futurist today remains strongly connected to Marinetti’s vision from 1909.

Selena Daly, Assistant Professor in Italian Studies, University College Dublin. This article was originally published on The Conversation (The Local)

Key words: Selena Daly, Italian futurists.

The Colosseum's history that only few knows

It is famed as the place where gladiators battled lions to the amusement of the citizens of ancient Rome. But of the six million visitors who flock to the Colosseum each year, how many know that during mediaeval times, it was also the fortress base of a powerful Roman family for over two centuries?

Or that in the 1600s, it was like a botanical garden? Its state of semi-abandon, combined with a micro-climate, enabled more than 400 species of plants to flourish inside its arched walls.

Screenshot: The Colosseum, the ancient Roman amphitheater
The Local

Now, thanks to some archaeological detective work based on discoveries made during a spruce-up, a new exhibition recounts some of the untold stories of one of the world's most-visited monuments.

"The Colosseum: An icon," which opens on a middle floor of the amphitheatre on Wednesday and runs until next January, shows that life inside the iconic structure did not end with the disintegration of the empire or the final show of the classical era, in 523 AD.

"What it shows is the extraordinary capacity the Colosseum has had to assume different identities over the centuries," said Francesco Prosperetti,one of the officials in charge of the jewel in the crown of Italian  tourism.

Ram's head, carved antlers

Scholars had long been aware that the mediaeval-era Colosseum had a fortress owned by the Frangipane family.

But much of the archaeological evidence of it was lost at the time of 19th-century excavations, when masonry was removed for new buildings or restorations elsewhere in the city.

Recent restoration work on upper sections of the partially-intact structure however uncovered traces of what was a raised wooden walkway which served as a lookout for the Frangipanes' soldiers, constantly wary of attacks by rival families.

That has enabled historical experts to put together model and pictorial representations of what the mediaeval Colosseum would have looked like, and these are among the highlights of the new exhibition.

Other archaeological finds, including one side of a ram's head and carved antlers, point to the mediaeval Colosseum being a hive of activity with the fortified aristocratic residence serviced by a range of businesses, market gardens and religious institutions.

The wooden fortress was partially destroyed by a 1349 earthquake but its surviving structures were later incorporated into a hospital sponsored by wealthy families whose seals have been recently found in digs on the site.

The collection also explores how the building came to be a reference point for students of architecture from far afield and, following its later fall into an elegant state of semi-abandon, how it inspired Renaissance painters and romantic poets.

Renovation and new boss

Completed in 80 AD, the Colosseum was the biggest amphitheatre built during the Roman empire.

Standing 48.5 metres (159 feet) high, it was capable of hosting 80,000 spectators for feasts of entertainment that encapsulated the brutality, hedonism and engineering genius that were among the defining features of ancient Rome.

The first phase of a major makeover of the venue was completed in July 2016 with a number of sections structurally strengthened and most of the remaining walls water-sprayed to remove centuries of encrusted dirt and grime.

The works were largely financed - to a reported tune of 25 million euros ($26.5 million) - by upmarket shoe and fashion company Tod's.

The government has pledged to put up the cash for a second phase which will involve rebuilding the arena floor and make the venue capable of hosting concerts and other cultural events, including re-enactment of some Roman-era events.

The culture ministry has also advertised for a new supremo to oversee the Colosseum as part of a broader shake-up of the management of the country's landmark historic and cultural attractions (Article By Angus MacKinnon, The Local)

Key words: Colosseum, history, restoration.

Unprecedented photographic venture that revealed every detail of Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel

The famous frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, whose ceiling was painted by Michelangelo, can now be examined in minute detail thanks to an unprecedented photographic venture, the Vatican Museums have said.

Screenshot: Sistine Chapel, The Local

By combining innovative digital technology and special LED lamps which aimed to reproduce daylight, photographers were able to make images measuring 43 centimetres (17 inches) tall by 1.2 metres (four feet) wide.

The work includes 220 life-sized images from the chapel, including elements of The Last Judgement as well as frescoes painted on the walls by Perugino and Botticelli.

The three works, of which 1,999 copies have been made and will be sent to the world's most important libraries, all give a perfect rendition of the colours used by the Renaissance masters, said Italian art publisher Scripta Maneant.

'The project took place over five years,' said the publisher's head of graphics Gianni Grandi as he unveiled the images inside the chapel late on Friday.

'The photographs let us understand Michelangelo's work, for example his use of striation or pointillism,' he said, referring to various painting techniques.

For mere mortals whose budget is unlikely to stretch to the 12,000 euros ($12,700) needed to buy the images, they can still visit the chapel itself which averages some 20,000 visitors per day.

The frescoes were given a new lease of life in 2014 when they were illuminated with a revolutionary new lighting system.

World's first 'restaurant-museum' in Italy

A new McDonald's restaurant opened in Italy with one added extra that wasn't on the menu: an ancient Roman road, complete with three skeletons.

The existence of the road, which had lain buried for centuries, was first revealed when work began on the restaurant in 2014.

Screenshot: Rome's Superintendency for 
Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape
The Local

McDonald's Italia funded the €300,000 restoration project and the result is thought to be the world's first 'restaurant-museum', where visitors can see the ancient street while muching on their burgers, thanks to a transparent floor.

The 45-metre road in Frattochie, south of the Italian capital, dates back to between the second and first century BC and is thought to have fallen out of use about three centuries later. It branches off the more famous Appian Way, which links Rome with the south of the country.

Ruts from wagon wheels are visible in the paving stones, which are made of local volcanic rock.

Though McDonald's financed the restoration, the project was managed by Rome's Superintendency for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape.

Archaeologists unearthed the skeletons of three adult males, thought to have been buried after the road had already fallen out of use.

Casts of these skeletons have been returned to the original graves while experts carry out further analysis on the original bones.

Local mayor Carlo Colizza said the McDonald's project was "a positive example" of private and public sector helping each other.

'We were able to perfectly combine business activities with respect for and appreciation of the history and archeology,' added Colizza.

In fact, construction projects in Italy are often delayed by the discovery of ancient ruins which then have to be properly excavated.

This has been one of the major factors in the repeated delays to Rome's third Metro line; workers have unearthed plenty of Roman treasures including a Roman barracks so impressive that the city is considering turning it into a museum.

Panels in English and Italian will give information about the history of the road and there will be a special children's route for younger visitors to explore after  their Happy Meal (or Appia Meal...). The site is also accessible, for free, without going to the McDonald's branch.

The CEO of McDonalds Italy said that the juxtaposition of antiquity and modernity in the McDonalds restaurant-museum was "virtuous". 

'It is a place where you can look at the future, through the past,' he said.

McDonalds in Italy

However, McDonalds is more often seen as a threat to Italy's cultural heritage than a possible help.

When its first restaurant opened up near the Spanish steps in Rome 30 years ago, there was public outcry. Fashion brand Valentino, which has its Rome headquarters nearby, complained about the smells and noise from the restaurant, and the opening also sparked the now global Slow Food movement.

And though the chain seems to have thrived, the announcement of a new branch on Vatican-owned property, not far from St Peter's Square, was met with fierce protest from cardinals and local residents.

Cardinal Elio Sgreccia labelled the decision to open the restaurant "controversial and perverse", but it opened in December despite the complaints.

Elsewhere, Florence has taken the struggle to protect its culinary history particularly strongly.

In 2016, the Tuscan capital turned down a request for the golden arches to set up shop in the city's central square, leading the fast food chain to threaten legal action (The Local)

Key words: Italy, Rome, McDonalds.