One hundred years after the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Ravenna Festival’s travels “Between Flesh and Heaven”, starting from Azio Corghi’s composition by the same name for the opening concert with Daniel Harding and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The words Pasolini used to describe his momentous encounter with Bach’s Violin Sonatas draw a not only musical thread that involves such artists as Giuseppe Gibboni, Accademia Bizantina, Elio Germano.

The opposition of human and divine expressed by the title also offers a chance to explore the many facets of the sacred, through the homage to Franco Battiato as well as the events under the mosaic vaults of the Byzantine basilicas – but also the Friendship concerts in the shrines of Lourdes and Loreto, where Riccardo Muti leads Italian and Ukrainian artists; a spontaneous invocation to the Mother, image of all mothers. Because, as Pasolini wrote in Supplication to My Mother: “You are the only one in the world who knows, of my heart, what it has always been, before any other love”. On the other hand, the Autumn Trilogy celebrates secular love with Mozart and Da Ponte’s masterpieces in the productions from the royal palaces of Drottningholm and Versailles.

Tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini
After the 25 May preview, entrusted to Ludovico Einaudi and his new album Underwater, the 33rd edition opens under the double sign of Pasolini and music with the opening concert and Corghi’s composition (the programme is completed by Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7). Pasolini’s favourite Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas will be performed by Giuseppe Gibboni, the Musical Offering by Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone, the Brandenburg Concertos by the Ensemble Zefiro, and Goldberg Variations by David Fray. The tribute to Pasolini is also paid in the languages of cinema with a film festival in the Rocca Brancaleone, dance (with the homage included in the Béjart Ballet’s programme), and theatre. For TeatroNove, Eugenio Sideri directs Calēre, the country paths that become a metaphor of the bewilderment of the next generation in a world where “development does not always mean progress”; in Bimba ‘22 Elena Bucci (Le belle bandiere) plays Laura Betti, a central figure in Pasolini’s human and artistic life. Within the Il Trebbo in musica, Cervia hosts two events dedicated to Pasolini, entrusted respectively to singer-songwriter Vasco Brondi, and Elio Germano and Teho Teardo.

Between Flesh and Heaven
Benjamin Britten’s Canticles are imbued with intense spirituality: three-time Grammy winner Ian Bostridge will perform them in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe. Singer-songwriter Franco Battiato danced on the border between sacred and secular for a long time; the Festival remembers him with the performance of his Messa Arcaica and his mystical songs; Simone Cristicchi, Juri Camisasca, Alice, Cristina Baggio join the Orchestra Maderna and the Choir of the Siena Cathedral. Angelo Privitera is at the keyboards, and he will also be in Cervia with the Nuovo Quartetto Italiano and Fabio Cinti, a winner of the 2018 Tenco competition for his performance of Battiato’s songs.

Two new sacred plays debut in the Basilica of San Vitale: Cristian Carrara was commissioned an opera dedicated to St. Francis and titled Transitus, while young Ravenna-born Filippo Bittasi composed History of a Bad Son – Monica, St. Augustine’s mother, takes centre stage. This year, the Festival also reaches the Paradiso, the last part of the project Public Call for the Divina Commedia that has seen Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari (Teatro delle Albe) turns Dante’s masterpiece into plays. Martinelli also signs another production that looks up at the sky: Aristophanes’s The Birds has been rewritten for the comical fury of seventy teenagers from Campania, within the collaboration with the Pompei Archaeological Site, where the play will premiere.

The Sound of the Festival
The symphonic section includes Christoph Eschenbach’s first visit to Ravenna to lead the Cherubini Youth Orchestra together with Gidon Kremer for Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Violin Concerto (Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 completes the programme). The strings of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and of the Cherubini Orchestra tackle a chamber music programme featuring Bach, Tchaikovsky, and J. M. Haydn, and led by Janos Pilz; the BFO returns to stage the day after, conducted by Ivan Fischer in Brahms’s Symphony No. 3 and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. This edition’s final concert will see Riccardo Muti and the Cherubini Orchestra together again, after the Roads of Friendship concerts, for Bizet’s “Roma” Symphony, Anatoly Ljadov’s Enchanted Lake, and Liszt’s Les préludes.

The Early Music is represented by two returns: that of Jordi Savall and his ensemble Hespèrion XXI for Folías & Canarios del Antiguo y del Nuevo Mundo, and that of the Orlando Consort with The Birth of the Renaissance.
In 2022, Ravenna turns again into the city of the cello: the 100 Cellos led by Giovanni Sollima and Enrico Melozzi shall offer four days of events, ending in a Progressive Rock night with the participation of PFM Premiata Forneria Marconi. Sicily is homeland to Sollima but also singer Carmen Consoli, in Ravenna on her Volevo fare la rockstar tour, and La Rappresentante di Lista for the first time on stage with a symphonic orchestra – the Corelli Orchestra led by Carmelo Emanuele Patti.

The latter is the third of the three events in Lugo. The Pavaglione hosts the “confidential jazz” star Diana Krall and a tribute to Buena Vista Social Club with Roberto Fonseca Trio and Eliades Ochoa. From the Cuban rhythm to the Irish one: at Palazzo S. Giacomo, a night dedicated to Irish folk music features Martin Hayes and the Birkin Tree; but the first of the two nights in Russi pays tribute to Rap music with Claver Gold and the Corelli Orchestra.
In Cervia-Milano Marittima, Il Trebbo in musica 2.2 opens on June 18 with Corrado Augias and includes, together with the mentioned tributes to Pasolini and Battiato, the premiere of Zerocalcare’s show with musician Giancane, Aldo Cazzullo and Moni Ovadia for Il duce delinquente, singer-songwriter Eduardo De Crescenzo to rediscover the classical Neapolitan song.

A Dancing Festival…and the Stage of the World
In Les Italiens de l’Opéra de Paris, a gala evening created by principal Alessio Carbone, the centre stage is taken by the Italian dancers who are part of that legendary company that admits only a limited number of foreign performers. The highly-anticipated return of Béjart Ballet Lausanne brings to stage t ‘M et variations by Gil Roman, Béjart’s successor as an artistic director, and Béjart fête Maurice which includes, together with the tribute to Pasolini, a dedication to Micha van Hoecke, Béjart’s collaborator of many years. Speaking of van Hoecke, who was the Festival’s main choreographer and who passed away last year, the Festival remembers him also with Canto per un poeta innamorato curated by Miki Matsuse, inseparable collaborator and life partner. The Hofesh Shechter II, a company of eight talented young performers, presents Contemporary Dance 2.0, the most recent work of the Israelian choreographer; whereas Virtual Dance for Real People, a project by Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto, offers the audience the chance to enjoy the performance live and virtually with VR headsets. The dance section is completed by two Dantesque events: Paradiso by gruppo nanou, created with artist Alfredo Pirri and musician Bruno Dorella, and Inferno – Terra del fuoco by Compagnia Artemis Danza / Monica Casadei.

The Festival’s programme comprises the most recent works by the local theatre companies: besides the works by Eugenio Sideri, Elena Bucci, Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari, Fanny & Alexander celebrates its thirty years by bringing to stage both the video-concert polyptych The Garden and Addio fantasmi, based on Nadia Terranova’s novel (Einaudi, a finalist in the 2019 Strega Prize).

Autumn Trilogy
From 31 October to 6 November, the Autumn Trilogy celebrates its 10th anniversary with the same formula that has made it into one of the Festival’s most eagerly awaited and beloved events: night after night, three opera titles will be performed on the stage of the Alighieri Theatre. This year the protagonists are Mozart and Da Ponte’s masterpieces: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte conducted respectively by Giovanni Conti, Erina Yashima, and Vladimir Ovodok. The project sees the Festival join its forces – the “home” ensembles named after Luigi Cherubini and the young conductors who were students at Riccardo Muti’s Academy – with two of Europe’s oldest theatres, the Swedish Drottningholms Slottsteater and the Opéra Royal de Versailles, for the productions directed by Ivan Alexandre.