A. Festival Valle D’ Itria (Martina Franca’s)
Martina Franca's Valle d'Itria Festival first took place in 1975 thanks
to the support of Paolo Grassi, founder of the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, director
of La Scala and president of Italy's RAI TV station who wanted to establish
a music festival of an original kind in his city presenting Italian music
drama composed in the belcanto of the 19th century. At the same time the
Festival emphasizes the important history of European music and, moreover,
the presence of Italian stylistic elements in French operas of 19th century.
The Festival's productions are performed according to authentic texts and interpretations
(above all for the vocal parts), which are inspired in the most appropriate way
in each case. In this way complete editions have been created, such as
Tancredi,
I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Norma, Fra
Diavolo, I Puritani, Semiramide,
II Pirata, l'Incoronazione di Poppea, Ernani, Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots,
Medeé, and the first
Ifigenia in Tauride and
Ippolito e
Aricia by Traetta,
Caritea Regina di Spagna by Mercadante which have
brought to light unknown aspects of these works, attracting the attention of
Italian music lovers. Special path is also to rediscovery alternative versions
of very well known masterpieces, as the first versions of Verdi’s operas
Macbeth and
Simon
Boccanegra, the Richard Strauss version of Mozart’s
Idomeneo, the
French version, on the original Wilde’s text, of
Salomé.
The Festival aims to promote the rediscovery and the revaluation of the operatic
tradition and belcanto style of the eighteenth and 19th centuries and to present
these in a stimulating cultural setting. Many of the Festival's productions have
become known through recordings and television programs made by the RAI and foreign
television. The Festival aims to reach regular opera audiences and the experts
at the same time, through original cultural programs, performing famous works,
less well-known aspects or rediscovering forgotten plays. (For more information
please visit:
http://www.festivaldellavalleditria.it/ ).
[Text written by Riccardo Carbutti, Art Director]
B. Castel Dei Mondi (Andria Bari): A
Festival, the city, the sites and the people, for a theatre out of the theatres.
A tale for images: Twisting the traditional expression of art, involving
directly the audience.
The
concept for Festival success is a theatre out of the theatres. The true
every-day site suddenly becomes the stage of an artistic fiction. Audience
is not anymore a passive observe, but someone who actively lives an experience.
Conceiving the scene in this way, the simplest sites of the every-day life become
“theatre” and common people become “characters”. The formula is the occupation
of spaces. Theatre is back a liquid space.
Castel dei Mondi is not only a theatre festival. It is a more complex event,
a mix of meetings for work and education. A European cultural project that started
up in 1997 and in which contemporaneousness and identity, communication effectiveness
and social quality find a living and fertile space for relations. Local culture
compares with the global market.
In its long story the Festival built up a rich network for exchanges and relations,
among public and private bodies, operators and audience. It is a network able
to represent today a fertile field, meaning a great social and economic richness.
We can strongly affirm that the Festival represents a focus for different productive
and artistic realities. Thanks to the Festival, throughout modern Art Comedian,
art, technique and contracting ability integrate, following a multidisciplinary
model aimed at boosting contemporary “high” cultures. With the same attention
and care, the Festival creates a product for entertainment and for intelligently
spending free time, paying attention to the most creative productions for mass
culture, for the most different identities and cultural traditions.
The Festival also means a site for realising meetings among different generations,
among more or less celebrated masters and news talents, age and education different
audience range.
As concerning audience, and shows’ enjoying, during the years, the Festival stimulated
a process of abandoning one’s firm and often consolatory habits, trying to focus
on all its complex differences and on traditional and innovative contradictions,
with the main goal of keeping high the quality of the stage.
We think there is no artistic geniality that could not be understood and appreciated
by the audience. And Castel dei Mondi Festival gives back to the audience, the
main ingredient for a succeeding fully cultural event, i.e. the joy in participating
and in playing one’s scene. (For more information please visit:
http://www.casteldeimondi.it/ ) [Text
written by Riccardo Carbutti, Art Director]
