Spoleto Festival, from the ‘Sagra’ of Pina Bausch to Ostermeir, the 65th edition kicks off

From Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, to the Trisha Brown Dance Company, from Blanca Li to Germaine Acogny & Malou Airaudoca, alongside the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, ensembles ‘in residence’, from the musical theater of Samuel Achache, Jedanne Candel, from the Sentieri Selvaggi by Carlo Boccadoro, to Italian and international dramaturgy with Thomas Ostermeir, Davide Enia, Fabio Cherstich, Leonardo Lidi. And then the special projects with the Carla Fendi Foundation (‘ArTechnology’), the Silvio d’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art, art and cinema at Palazzo Collicola, the collaboration with the Monini (‘Musica da Casa Menotti ‘), the meetings open to the public (‘ Cinema and Psychoanalysis’, ‘VII National Day of the World that doesn’t exist’). These are some of the protagonists and events of the 65 edition of the Spoleto Festival which will take place from 24 June to 10 July. Over 60 shows on the bill, all premiered in Italy, with more than 500 artists from 36 countries. For the second year, Monique Veaute follows her multidisciplinary and international vocation to the artistic direction, weaving a web of transversal relationships to the individual arts that is condensed around three programmatic lines. The music of the two worlds, the voice of women and new ways of telling music. At the center of the musical program is Barbara Hannigan, soprano and conductor, a world star whose voice is one of the most original and requested of the contemporary opera scene. Her residence in Spoleto is closely linked to that of the Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, with which she shares the stage in Piazza Duomo for two evenings. On 2 July she is the conductor and singer of La Voix Humaine, in her original interpretation of the masterpiece by Francis Poulenc and Jean Cocteau, which she compares to Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen. Two, however, are the appointments with the director Antonio Pappano. On July 10 Barbara Hanningan performs George Gershwin’s Fascinating Rhythm in the Knoxville and Noon concert. Summer of 1915 by Samuel Barber. For the grand finale of the Festival that Antonio Pappano dedicates to the great American composers also with the Symphony n. 3 by Aaron Copland. Great expectations for the concert on July 3 (Roman Theater). Barbara Hannigan accompanied by pianist Stephen Gosling interprets Jumalattaret, a cycle of songs composed for her by John Zorn and inspired by the Finnish epic poem Kalevala, which tests her technical and expressive vocal possibilities, considered to be at the limit of human possibility. And still illustrious female personalities at the Spoleto Festival. Expected, among others, the Portuguese singer Mariza, the artist who has collected the legacy of the ‘queen of Fado’ Amália Rodrigues, Dianne Reeves, undisputed diva of the genre and unanimously considered descendant of the legacy of the great Sarah Vaughan, the four -times Grammy Award winner Angélique Kidjo. On the border between installation, concert and live set is the musical performance by Tovel (aka Matteo Franceschini) and Jacopo Mazzonelli (8-9 July, Teatrino delle 6 Luca Ronconi). Franceschini communicates through electronics with the real sounds of the piano sculptures created by Jacopo Mazzonelli. This year the Festival calendar hosts three film reviews. A selection of documentaries by Thierry de Mey and Michael Blackwood, screened during the weekend at Palazzo Collicola, in collaboration with Mahler & LeWitt Studios, the screening of the filmography of Pier Paolo Pasolini proposed by Cinéma in Sala Pegasus on the centenary of the birth of the famous filmmaker ( 24 June – 10 July), the tribute to Federico Fellini (2-3 July) and the relationship between his cinema and psychoanalysis, thanks to the Cinema and Psychoanalysis review curated by Claudia Spadazzi and Elisabetta Marchiori in collaboration with Cinéma Sala Pegasus . The Municipality of Spoleto also presents a series of meetings on the themes of Circular Economy Development, sustainable food for identity landscapes, Spoleto City of Culture 2025 and Unesco recognition for the Festival dei Due Mondi, moments of confrontation to outline the development path of the city between cultural growth and environmental protection.