DOWNLOAD Programme Ravenna Festival 2017
DOWNLOAD Press release Ravenna Festival 2017
The 28th edition of Ravenna Festival (May 25 – July 11) explores the concept of revolutions and the relationship between power and the artist in the centenary of the Russian Revolution, through the homage to “The Noise of Time”, a title borrowed from Julian Barnes’s novel on Shostakovich and from Osip Mandelstam’s memoirs. The memory of such a crucial event provides a fil rouge between musical and expressive revolutions, but the Festival will also feature a section dedicated to Dante, concerts in the Byzantine basilicas, and a tribute to India. Once again Riccardo Muti and his Cherubini Youth Orchestra will be protagonists of the Roads of Friendship project, which in 2017 celebrates 20 years of unforgettable concerts dedicated to the friendship among peoples in cities marked by history. Besides great symphonic music (feat. conductors such as Temirkanov, Bychkov, and soloists Giovanni Sollima and Anne-Sophie Mutter) and dance (Olivier Dubois, Ballet Nacional de Cuba…), the programme includes important events where music and the great B&W cinema meet. The Festival will come back in November with a new Autumn Trilogy (Nov 17-23), “On the verge of the XX century”, showcasing “Cavalleria rusticana”, “Pagliacci”, “Tosca”.
Of the October Revolution, the 2017 Festival celebrates the creative energies able to transform all the artistic languages, without forgetting those who, like Shostakovich, were victims of Stalin’s terror. The “Russian” section, where the eye is caught by the Italian premiere of Aleksei Kruchonykh’s Futurist opera “Victory over the Sun” with Matiushin’s music and Kazimir S. Malevich’s set and costumes, also features Yuri Temirkanov and Semyon Bychkov on the podium of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the Munich Philharmonic respectively. The symphony programme is completed by Leonard Slatkin, who will lead the Orchestre National de Lyon and the extraordinary Anne-Sophie Mutter in a concert including a tribute to Tarkovskij, Juraj Valcuha with the Orchestra Nazionale RAI and soloist David Fray, and a concert dedicated to Haydn featuring Giovanni Sollima and Accademia Bizantina led by Ottavio Dantone. The Passage to India includes the three-day Darbar Festival and Anoushka Shankar’s concert, as well as Shobana Jeyasingh’s choreographies; while the section Music and Cinema will see R. Wiene’s 1920 “The Cabinet of Dr Caligari”, C. T. Dreyer’s 1928 “La passion de Jeanne d’Arc”, and Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 “Gold Rush” accompanied by live music – by Edison Studio, Orlando Consort, and the Cherubini Orchestra led by Timothy Brock respectively. Two homages to Arcangelo Corelli’s violin sonatas, within the section Revolutions in Music, and a tribute to Monteverdi 450 years after his birth are part of the rich programme of concerts in the precious basilicas, that the Festival keeps “inhabiting” 20 years after the acknowledgement of 8 early-Christian and Byzantine monuments in Ravenna as UNESCO World Heritage sites. Spirituality, music, and mosaics come together thanks to events ranging from the sound of the Protestant North of Hannu Norjanen’s Cantores Minores to the Orthodox Choir of Moscow Patriarchate led by Anatolkij Grindenko. Meanwhile for 34 days Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari’s “Inferno” will be at the very heart of the section dedicated to Dante, while the double daily events returns to the Franciscan Cloisters by the Tomb of Dante – with the tribute to the poet at 11am – and to the Basilica of San Vitale with the Vespers at 7pm.