If Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities are depicted as experiences, memories and desires rather than places, the centenary of the writer’s birth offers Ravenna Festival a happy pretext to reflect on the dual nature of the city, emblem of the community and its crisis, and its ‘invisible’ dimension as a crossroads of cultures, ideas and narratives. Titles that explore the terrible face of civilisation are contrasted with a celebration of dialogue between cultures and music worlds, and a double opening, featuring respectively Laurie Anderson and Martha Argerich, flanked by Mischa Maisky, opens a constellation of extraordinary soloists, from Anne-Sophie Mutter to Leonidas Kavakos and Beatrice Rana; the latter plays Rachmaninov for an evening with ballet stars (the dance programme also includes the Italian premiere of WE, the EYES by Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten). In December, Riccardo Muti – already on the podium of his Cherubini Orchestra for The Roads of Friendship in Jerash and Pompei – conducts an opera triptych with Norma and Nabucco in semi-staged form and a Verdi gala.

A dedication of love draws inspiration from the 7th centenary of Dante’s death for two months of events, planets and satellites that revolve around the central sun of the Poet and his masterpiece, but also follow other and more eccentric orbits. After the premiere with the Wiener, Riccardo Muti travels along The Roads of Friendship with his Cherubini and reaches Yerevan for Tigran Mansurian’s Purgatorio, part of a triptych of commissions that is completed by Giovanni Sollima’s Inferno and Valentin Silvestrov’s Paradiso. But this edition’s treasure trove of premieres also includes Mauro Montalbetti’s chamber opera Teodora and a restaging of L’heure exquise, co-produced with the Royal Ballet, with which Alessandra Ferri and Carsten Jung pay tribute to Béjart and Carla Fracci. The Autumn Trilogy follows the fil rouge of the Poet with three other new productions that explore the languages of dance, music, and words: Sergei Polunin dances his way through the realms of the afterlife, Goethe and Schumann meet for Faust’s dantesque journey in the imaginative staging directed by Luca Micheletti, while Elio Germano and Teho Teardo are entrusted with the luminous verses of the last canto of Paradiso.
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Sailing “on the high and open sea” the 30th edition – which opened under the sign of the greatest interpretation tradition with the meeting between Maurizio Pollini and Riccardo Muti – resumes the never truly dismissed vocation for travelling, beyond any boundary or diversity, and reaches the very foundation of our civilisation and mindset. In the heart of the ancient acropolis of Athens, Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 is heard as a true hymn to brotherhood between peoples. Whilst the unrivalled voices of the Tallis Scholars are entrusted with the evocative journey through the Liturgy of the Hours, the relentless rhythm of the 100 percussions lets us glimpse the original source of music, but also its infinite variations: on the one side, Stewart Copeland’s surprising flexibility in a symphonic performance; on the other, Nick Mason’s timeless energy. The touching lyricism of Dante’s Purgatorio turns into a vivid play that calls for the whole city’s support, and three extraordinary women tower above the opera trilogy: Norma, Aida, and Carmen.

Paying a tribute to the October Revolution, a century later, means delving into its extraordinary energies, which expressed a deep yearning for Modernity, as well as into the searing disappointments and horrors that followed. It means to collect what remains beyond “the noise of time” – a title shared by Julian Barnes’s novel dedicated to Shostakovich and Osip Mandelstam’s prose. Between musical and artistic revolutions, the explosive vitality of Dante has been amplified in Inferno, with the open call to the citizens curated by Teatro delle Albe; while the new productions of the Autumn Trilogy have reached “the verge of the 20th century”,  shedding new light on the Italian Realism: Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci, and Tosca. A dream comes true: the Roads of Friendship lead to Tehran, again with Riccardo Muti, again under the sign of the infallible common language of music

A truly Dantesque “journey” winded along new creations, entrusted to composers like Adriano Guarnieri, with the video opera L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle, and Nicola Piovani with La vita nuova, sung on a recital by Elio Germano, soprano and small orchestra. But the musical theatre was protagonist with the great Italian opera tradition as well: it was to Verdi’s last masterpiece, Falstaff, that Riccardo Muti dedicated his first Italian Opera Academy.

The acrobatic illusionism of Momix was performed with the world premiere of Alchemy. Then Romagna’s folk dances held the stage, with those waltzes, polkas, and mazurcas born in the farmyards of our countryside. The music could be heard everywhere, from the “balera” in the park in a whirlwind of a “polka day”, then passing over to Strauss’s noble Viennese dances, but also to Trovesi and Coscia’s jazz and the estranging sound of Simone Zanchini’s accordion, coming together at last for a festive tribute to Secondo Casadei.
The collection of musicians was enhanced by the performance of one of the greatest cellists of our times: Yo-Yo Ma.

Once upon a time… fairy tales took shape and came to life in the exciting and grim Cinderella by Matthew Bourne, and then in the explosive and joyful Impempe Yomlingo, Mozart’s Magic Flute turned into a musical and imbued with the rhythmic physicality of an orchestra of African marimbas. The Roads of Friendship arrived in Africa, at the Ururu Park of Nairobi.
Meanwhile Kent Nagano, Zubin Mehta and Claudio Abbado returned to the podium.

Dance and theatre became prayer and ritual in the name of the Sufi mystic poet in Robert Wilson’s new piece, Rumi. In The Blink of the Eye, and through the absolute mastery of the body of Buddhist monks from the Shaolin Temple, guided in Sutra by choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. And with the Basilica of San Vitale as a background, different religions intertwined in the charm of Voices in prayer, sounds and songs mixed in with thoughts and words by Massimo Cacciari. An exceptional duo for a grand finale: the prophet of funk, Herbie Hancock, and the most prodigious piano talent of the new generation, Lang Lang.

The collaboration with the Salzburg Whitsun Festival was launched, a five-year project to rediscover the “Neapolitan School”. Under the direction of Muti masterpieces which had been forgotten for centuries were once again heard in the beautiful library of the conservatory in San Pietro a Majella, starting with Il ritorno di Don Calandrino (The Return of Don Calandrino) by Domenico Cimarosa.
And for the first time choreographer Matthew Bourne, with Swan Lake, chose Ravenna as the exclusive stage for his exciting productions.

The voice of the muezzin echoed among the stones of the majestic Roman amphitheatre of El Djem, Tunisia, and Riccardo Muti lowered his baton, letting the religious call die down before returning to direct the Mephistopheles: “moments like this – he would later state – transcend different religions and cultures”, and underline the true meaning of the Roads to Friendship.
For the first time the “resident” orchestra, the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, perfomed at the Festival.

A truly “Saison Russe” was on stage: the innovation of the Russian theatre, Helikon, and of its founder Dmitry Bertman invaded the Alighieri, with four works – from Tchaikovsky’s magnificent Queen of Spades to the sensual Lady Macbeth in the Mtsensk District of Šostakovič, from the funny eclecticism of Stravinskiy’s Mavra to the timbric virtuosity of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Kashchey the Deathless. And Russian is also the Festival’s dancing heart with the Kirov Ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

The infinite expressive resources of opera were staged with the transgressive interpretation by Eimuntas Nekrošius (Otello) and with the virtual technology of Cristina Mazzavillani Muti’s first directorial experimentations (Capulets and Montagues). Pierre Boulez was back as well, while James Levine and Jeffrey Tate took the stage in Ravenna for the first time.

With Pagliacci, Riccardo Muti completed the “verismo” diptych that he had begun a couple of years before with Cavalleria Rusticana. The same extraordinary creative team set the stage with Liliana Cavani as director, Oscar award-winning Gabriella Pescucci, and Dante Ferretti for costumes and scenery. But the Festival also moved toward renewed spirituality, along an unprecedented “via dei canti” (song pathways), from the perfection of the Hilliard Ensemble to the mysterious sounds of the baganna, the Ethiopian harp…searching for the “genius vocis”.

At night, on a military plane, Riccardo Muti and the Orchestra of La Scala flew over the Adriatic, crossing over to Sarajevo, the Bosnian city wounded by the war, scattered with smouldering rubble and debris, calling for help and asking to be listened to. Thus Le Vie dell’Amicizia (The Roads to Friendship) were created, “bridges of brotherhood” casted every year to unite peoples and cultures through the power of music. That strength that emanated from the unique and unmistakable gesture of Carlos Kleiber, in one of his rare and precious concerts.

Ravenna’s Mediterranean calling was rediscovered, a crossroads of cultures and ancient civilizations, suspended “between East and West”, from the incredible voice of Sister Marie Keyrouz to the flamenco of Cristina Hoyos. But evocative oriental echoes were heard with the concerts of the most prestigious performers as well: Misha Maisky, Martha Argerich, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Valery Gergiev.

The most prestigious of German orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado, arrived in Ravenna for the prologue, while for the finale the unforgettable Italian voice of Luciano Pavarotti rose above the waters of the city’s harbour: both along the common thread connecting “Bellini and Wagner”. A memorable show was the Dantesque poetic workshop by Federico Tiezzi with Sandro Lombardi (I Magazzini) performing Paradiso (or Heaven), the dramaturgy by Giovanni Giudici, followed in the subsequent years by Purgatorio (or Purgatory) and Inferno (or Hell), by Mario Luzi and Edoardo Sanguineti respectively.

“Cherubini e la scuola francese” (Cherubini and the French School): Luca Ronconi’s direction and Riccardo Muti’s baton, with the Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala, brought on stage Lodoïska, the musical revolution of one of the greatest European composers. And for the first time on the austere backdrop of the Basilica of St. Francis “High Mass” was played, conducted yet again by Muti.