Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto: how to follow it

The traditional final concert (10 July, 19.30 in Piazza Duomo), on the other hand, is entrusted to theOrchestra of Santa Cecilia directed by Antonio Pappanowith the participation of soprano Barbara Hannigan, for a program made in the USA with pages by Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland.

Hannigan, also as conductor, is the star of the only Spoleto opera proposal, La Voix Humaine by Poulenc (from Cocteau), in an outdoor video-design show in which she plays Elle, a woman at the height of pain, obsessed and rejected, trapped in a world between fantasy and reality. The Canadian singer also stars in Jumalattaretsong cycle composed by John Zorn.

The voice of women at the Festival dei Due Mondi

Jazz, electronics, baroque and contemporary sounds intertwine in the musical program, embellished by the voices of star like Angélique Kidjothe Portuguese Mariza (celebrating his first 20 years of career) and Dianne Reeves (“The most admired jazz diva since the heyday of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday” according to New York Times) that they perform in the spectacular Piazza del Duomo in Spoleto.

Singer Angélique Kidjo. Photo by Fabrice Mabillot.

Angélique Kidjo defined by Guardian as “one of the 100 most influential women in the world”, from London Telegraph as “undisputed queen of African music” and since Time as «the first diva of Africa», for her commitment against discrimination and racism, she is considered the heir of Miriam Makeba. Great interpreters, who you might find sitting next to you at a club table. Because in the days of the most glamorous festival in Italy, you can breathe an atmosphere in Spoleto unique: the city comes alive with artists from all over the world, enchanted, like tourists, by the beauty of the places. And everything is mixed, and even the squares and streets of the historic center become a stage.

In Spoleto tourists, but not by chance

Between one show and another, a visit to the Cathedral is a mustwhich with its facadeembellished with Solsterno’s mosaic, e with the arcades of the portico (commissioned in 1491 by Ambrogio Barocci), it is the backdrop to the great concerts in Piazza del Duomo. Then, agenda in hand, she runs to the next appointment. Or you reach the famous basilica of San Salvatore (Unesco World Heritage) which assembles evidence of the Roman era, such as columns, bases, capitals and cornices. Don’t miss the National Museum of the Duchy of Spoleto (in the Rocca Albornoziana, an imposing fortress that stands on the top of Colle Sant’Elia) which collects the most important Lombard testimonies.

Going around the world at a dance pace

The Trisha Brown Dance Company in “Astral Converted“. Photo: Samantha Siegel. .

Then we start again with the shows. For dance, the Festival of the Two Worlds remembers the New York choreographer Trisha Brown, who passed away five years ago, with the performances of the Trisha Brown Dance Companyat the Roman Theater with Astral Converted / Working Title (1 and 2 July, at 9.30 pm) and at Palazzo Collicola, which hosts Trisha Brown: In Plain Site (Sunday 3 July, at 5pm and 7pm) a selection of the famous Early Works conceived by Brown in the 70s and performed outside the canonical theatrical spaces.

I play, sing and act

A scene from Le Crocodile trompeur / Didon et Enée by French directors Jeanne Candel and Samuel Achache. © Victor Tonelli

Italian debut for the Musical Theater of the French directors Jeanne Candel and Samuel Achache, who present Le Crocodile trompeur / Didon et Enée a mix of Shakespearean theater and musical drama, myth and tragedy, music and theatrical action. A “contemporary farce” that starts from the Baroque opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, draws fromAeneid of Virgil and from Sonnets by Shakespeare, and links everything with references to cinema and painting. Multidisciplinarity is the stylistic code of Demi-Véronique by Jeanne Candler, choreography of bodies and notes inspired by Fifth Symphony by Gustav Mahaler.

Music and theater, singing and acting, also in Sans tambour by Samuel Achache, in which the actors, singers and musicians on stage seek their way in a world reduced to rubble.

The art of defying gravity

A moment of “Fugue / Trampoline”, one of the five performances by Yoann Bourgeois. Credit Pascale Cholette.

Not to be missed Tentative approaches to a point of suspension. Program of short works (from Saturday 2 July to Sunday 3 July) traveling show by Yoann Bourgeois, dancer and choreographer who blends dance and contemporary circus. In the five different performances, staged in three different places, the bodies of the artists challenge the forces of physics, as in Fugue / Trampoline, a small dance show metaphor of an existential trajectory along a staircase that leads nowhere.

Curtain up!

And the “real” theater? There is great anticipation for History of Violence by Thomas Ostermeier (New Theater Gian Carlo Menotti8 July at 9 pm, 9 July at 7 pm, Sunday 10 July at 3 pm), theatrical adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Édouard Louis, an analysis on desire, emigration and racism.

From left, Christoph Gawenda and Renato Schuch in Thomas Ostermeier’s “History of Violence”.

The “narrator” Davide Enia, on the other hand, brings his own on stage Italy-Brazil 3 to 2: the legendary 1982 Mundial match told from the living room of a Sicilian family glued in front of the TV. First ever Hybris (7-10 July) by RezzaMastrella (Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella).

A dive into the metaverse

Antonio Rezza in RezzaMastrella’s “Hybris” (Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella). Photo Annalisa Gonella.

Le Bal de Paris by Blanca Li (from June 24 to July 9, every hour all day) is one immersive and interactive show by Chanel in which the public, to enter virtual reality, wears special equipment consisting of headphones, visor, backpack and sensors on the wrists and ankles, and then follows the paths indicated by the actors for half an hour. “I wanted to create a show that did not yet exist and that I could not have imagined twenty years ago: this is what excites me” says Blanca Li of her about her show. virtual realitywhich in live and film version won the Leone d’Oro selection in the “Venice VR Expanded” section of 78^to Venice International Film Festival.

“Le Bal de Paris” by choreographer and director Blanca Li.

In Spoleto, art on the walls. And in one click

If Anselm Kiefer signs the official manifesto of this 65th edition of the Spoleto Festivalthe Carla Fendi Foundation proposes ArTificial ArTechnologyprojecting the magnification of Fatigue fragment n. 26 by Daniele Puppi on the facade of the Caio Melisso Theater in Piazza del Duomo.

The enlargement of “Frammento Fatica n. 26 ”by Daniele Puppi on the facade of the Teatro Caio Melisso-Spazio Carla Fendi, in Piazza del Duomo, in Spoleto.

In Spoleto, photography and contemporary art also deserve time:The spring of African Womenat the Cloister of San Nicolò, is the exhibition that the photographer Patrizia Bonanzinga dedicates to the women of sub-Saharan Africa. Fabrizio Plessione of the major exponents of video art, exhibits his works in the rooms of the Palazzo Collicola modern art museum, in a solo show promoted with the Venice Academy of Fine Arts. The Attolico Collection, focused on contemporary art, is presented in the new exhibition space of Palazzo Collicola.

Tribute to the masters of cinema: Pasolini and Fellini

It’s not over. Between meetings, prizes, workshops, there is also space for cinema: two of the reviews focus on the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini. On the centenary of Pasolini’s birth, Cinéma Sala Pegasus dedicates (from June 24 to July 8) almost all of his filmography, from his debut in 1961 with Beggar at the last Salò or the 120 days of Sodomreleased posthumously in 1975. Life is a dream. The dream is life (Sala Pegasus, 2 July at 9:45 am, 3 July at 10:30 am) instead it is a tribute to Federico Fellini.

Information, program and calendar: festivaldispoleto.com

iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED