Ravenna Festival is one of the main cultural festival of all the summer. The multidisciplinary event has been enlivening the summers of Ravenna for the past 16 years and was created with the precise intention of providing a place of encounter for art disciplines and forms, from music to visual arts. Still today, you can find the big names of music and dance in the most beautiful locations of the ancient Byzantine capital: Teatro Alighieri, the church of San Vitale and Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
This year Ravenna Festival has set itself the target of investigating a fertile utopia, at the heart of the very concept of 'modernity'. The desert grows is the title of 2005 edition.
The 2005 programme, rich in highly interesting events, will be dedicating some of its major appointments to the complex and fascinating network of relations existing between music and image, Augenmusik (music for the eyes). It will, for instance, provide the inspiration for a monographic concert, a tribute to Edgar Varèse presented by the London Sinfonietta, to which will be paired the video “Desertsâ€, expressly made by the world’s greatest living video-artist, the American Bill Viola.
Among the different themes that intertwine in the forthcoming appointment, the devilish will emerge from the very opening of the Festival, with the new production of Gounod’s Faust, Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna and Boito’s Mefistofele. The vocation for discovering young talents which has always distinguished the Festival, this year will enable significant space to be dedicated to one of Europe’s most dynamic and innovative companies in the field of music theatre, the British Opera North theatre company which, for the first time in Italy, will be presenting two works of great interest and never before performed in our country: Bohuslav Martinu°’s Julietta and Kurt Weill’s One Touch of Venus.
The traditional participation of prestigious orchestras and great conductors will again be renewed this year with Riccardo Muti, Valerij Gergiev and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, at the helm of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Marinskij Theatre Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic respectively.
As regards dance, counterbalancing the prestigious participation of one of the “historical†modern dance companies, that founded by Martha Graham, will be two classics such as Giselle presented by the Kremlin Ballet and Midsummer night’s dream performed by the Teatro alla Scala Ballet starring étoile Roberto Bolle.
This year's Festival is also strongly committed on the theatre front with three major "premières". The project continues dedicated to female figures in the history of Ravenna with Nevio Spadoni's new version (staged in the Cloisters of the Classense Library by Elena Bucci and Chiara Muti) dedicated to the love story between the young countess Teresa Guiccioli and Lord Byron, while the two major theatrical companies of Ravenna, the Teatro delle Albe and Fanny & Alexander will be presenting at the Festival, for the first time in Italy, their new works: La Mano based on the novel of the same name by Luca Doninelli and Vaniada freely inspired by one of Nabakov's literary masterpieces (ADA).
The variegated Festival 2005 programme will also be presenting, for the first time in Italy, Brian Wilson, inventor of surf music and founder of the Beach Boys.
But the Festival nights have lots more in store...
For more information about Ravenna Festival visit www.ravennafestival.org
