Dante Festival Lecco
“In the night between 13 and 14 September 1321 Dante Alighieri dies in Ravenna. 700 years after that date we celebrate the poet, a man of letters who was able to investigate and tell the human condition in its essence. “
These are the words and the memory with which the organizers open the story of the Dante Festival Lecco to be held from Thursday 9 to Monday 20 September , organized by Res Music, Municipality of Lecco , Province of Lecco, FAI Delegation of Lecco , with the patronage of the Lombardy Region and with the contribution of Lecchese Community Foundation and other public and private bodies.
The city of Manzoni celebrates the great Florentine poet with an event that will touch on different aspects of the universalistic culture of the Middle Ages of which Dante was a great interpreter.
Thus, as in that culture heaven and earth mix, sacred and profane, serious and comic , the meetings to be held in Lecco, Mandello, Calolziocorte , will bring together epic themes, forms of art, expressive methods, to highlight multiple suggestions of that universe that turns out to be current in every era.
Shows, concerts, conferences, films, theater for adults and for young people will therefore create a multidisciplinary path, in order to combine critical reflection, scientific planning and creativity.
“On the 700th anniversary of his death, – explains the councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Lecco Simona Piazza – organizing a festival in Lecco in memory of Dante in the childhood city of Manzoni is a source of great pride for our community. The event aims to promote the Supreme Poet of Italian literature thanks to the presence of guests from the world of culture and through an artistic program capable of connecting the Dante universe with the most important characters of our territory, such as Manzoni and Stoppani: through conferences, concerts and films, we enhance the city of Lecco to promote our excellence towards tourists and enthusiasts. ”
A festival imagined and created by three personalities who work in different areas of culture. Ancilla Oggioni , actress and director trained at the prestigious Paolo Grassi, who is the artistic director of the Dante Festival Lecco, Gerolamo Fazzini , journalist, writer, columnist for Avvenire, Angelo Rusconi , musicologist and president of Res Musica , a cultural association characterized by collaboration with local and national realities.
An event that aims to convey Dante and his work to various audiences, in differentiated forms, in the belief that his heritage is a heritage to be communicated to all, since Dante is precisely “a young man of 700 years”.
A path that crosses cultural sites of the Manzoni city and moves to historic sites in neighboring municipalities in order to place Dante's work and creations artistic spaces in spaces that enhance their characteristics.
“A festival of national importance that finds space between the lake and our mountains – underlines the axis ssor to the Territorial Attractiveness of the Municipality of Lecco Giovanni Cattaneo – through which we offer Lecco and tourists an event full of proposals of a different nature, which pay homage to the memory of the Florentine poet who died 700 years ago. Lecco, our territory and the Resegone will be the setting for an exhibition that enhances the history of the Italian language and the international echo of the cultural heritage that Dante left us “.
The program will see the presence of personalities and realities of the cultural, academic and artistic world with excellence of international level that are a guarantee of an adequate conjugation between scientific quality and communication skills. There is no shortage of proposals created ad hoc for the festival and connections with people linked to the territory such as Manzoni and Stoppani.
Irene Alfaroli, Provincial Councilor Delegated for Culture and Tourism states , “The Province of Lecco is proud to be part of a virtuous collaboration with the other bodies involved, in a synergy that, thanks to the format of the festival, allows it to operate extensively on the territory. program have the dual purpose of promoting the knowledge of the figure of Dante and of enhancing our wonderful landscape, touristic and cultural heritage through direct experience in places perfectly corresponding for suggestions and beauty to the deepest and most emotional meanings evoked by the texts, by the music and the proposed shows. “
Dante Festival will live its inaugural moment with the literary conversation between Franco Nembrini And Gerolamo Fazzini entitled The Alighieri. 700 years and it seems like yesterday. The meeting, which recalls the leitmotif of the entire review “Dante. A young man of 700 “, underlines the formidable, and at first sight inexplicable, relevance of a poet and man of culture so far in time, yet so close to many issues that mark today, first of all the role of man in history and the meaning of life. Nembrini is among the authors who have contributed most in recent years to the rediscovery of Dante among the vast public, called to talk about education and Dante throughout Italy and abroad. Recently he published Paradiso, the last of the three volumes of a new Comedy commented by the author and illustrated by Gabriele Dell'Otto with a preface by Alessandro D'Avenia. (Thursday 9 September, 9.00 pm, Franciscan Cenacle, Piazza Cappuccini, Lecco).
I was delighted to watch, confesses Dante in the X Canto del Purgatorio.
The actor and director Franco Palmieri accompanies the audience to watch, to “browse behind the scenes of the Comedy”, to meet the characters, imagine places, indulge in visions: Dante Cabaret – Behind the scenes of the Comedy is a play with an ironic and humorous tone, but above all a poetic one, which comments, tells and interprets some passages chosen from the three canticles. Palmieri brings back his passion and deep knowledge of Dante's work in the “Cabaret”. The 2016 book Enchanted by the comedy that collects years of shared reflections with readers of the Comedy, met in the streets and squares of Florence and other cities. Palmieri has collaborated with Giovanni Testori, with Ermanno Olmi, has signed international direction, directed for years the Teatro dell'Arca in Genoa, the only theater in Italy created in a prison and open to the public (Friday 10 September, 6.30 pm, Polytechnic exhibition space , Via Previati)
After the spettacolo, a great opportunity for the public will be the meeting with the artist at the PolEATecnico Bistrot. (Euro 10.00 with payment at the Bistrot)
Still theater, this time dedicated to the younger audience (from 11 years old) with the musical spettacolo La voce di Beatrice . What would it be like? Or would the Comedy even have been born without Beatrice? Debora Mancini, actress, gives voice to the muse of the Poet who, walking among the shelves of a library, looks for “her Dante” and tells the story of a love beyond death from his point of view. On stage the multi-instrumentalist Daniele Longo with music composed by Enrico Ernst . (Saturday 11 September, 4.30 pm, Franciscan Cenacle, Piazza Cappuccini, Lecco)
What music can be resonated in Dante's mind, which repertoires could he refer to when he recreated musical suggestions in the verses of the Comedy, or when did he talk about music and poetry?
They asked themselves Claudia and Lidia Caffagni, Elisabetta de Mircovich, Matteo Zenatti or laReverdie, one of the most famous groups in the world of medieval music, in creating Music at the time of Dante , a concert for voices and instruments that crosses musical genres and themes dear to the Poet. To introduce the concert will be Angelo Rusconi . (Saturday 11 September, 9.00 pm, Villa Manzoni, Via Don Guanella, 1)
Before the concert, thanks to the collaboration with Si.MUL, Barbara Cattaneo and Mauro Rossetto present The unveiled logo. Three portraits in Villa Manzoni : the portrait of Dante kept in the Civic Museums used as an image of the festival, and two portraits of Petrarch and Manzoni to compose an ideal triad of the Italian language. (8.30 pm)
The ancient Cloister of the Canonica di San Nicolò will host a spettacolo on selected texts of the Vita Nova intertwined with music of the time: a poetic and musical journey centered on Dante's encounter with Beatrice and on the interior itinerary marked by the woman's death, which will then be transfigured in the verses of the Comedy. The protagonist is the actress Ancilla Oggioni , accompanied by the song and the viella of Elisabetta de Mircovich , who will also play the symphonia and medieval bells, in a continuous dialogue with the acting. (Sunday 12 September, 6.00 pm, Cloister of the Canonica di San Nicolò)
And finally we went out to see the stars again.
And the audience of the Dante Festival will also have the magical feeling of immersing yourself in the visible sky of Purgatory thanks to the journey through time made by Loris Lazzati , astronomy scholar and enthusiast Dante reader. Lazzati has created an evocative way to approach Dante's astronomy by simultaneously involving emotionality and analytical spirit: Traveling with Dante: the celestial landscapes of Purgatory is the projection-conference to be held at the Civic Planetarium of Lecco in collaboration with the Deep Space Lecco Astrofili Group. (Monday 13 September, 9.00 pm and 10.30 pm, Planetarium, Corso Matteotti, 32)
“The analogies between the Liber (Liber Scalae, an Arab work inspired by the legend of the ascension of Mohammed ed) and the Divine Comedy are such and many by now as to allow us to affirm with certainty that the ascension of the Prophet, re-woven and retold through a series of successive stories, is one of the foundations – perhaps the most profound – of the greatest poem of the Western Middle Ages “(F .Cardini)
This is the assumption of the conference Dante and Islam by Franco Cardini , Professor of Medieval History at the University of Florence, specialist, among other things, of relations between Christianity and Islam. Not only then, Cardini argues, the now recognized Christian and pre-Christian sources, not only Virgil's Aeneid, but also texts of Islamic ancestry may have influenced Dante's work. The evening, conducted by Gerolamo Fazzini, is organized in collaboration with the Liceo Classico “A. Manzoni ”of Lecco. (Tuesday 14 September, 9.00 pm, Auditorium Casa dell'Economia, Via Tonale, 30)
It is a pearl of silent cinema, one of the first blockbusters with special effects, the film Inferno shot in 1911 by Giuseppe Berardi and Arturo Busnengo to tell “how much of real interest can be projected to the public” of Dante's cantica. Thanks to the intervention of the artistic director and director Ettore Pasculli , the film, which remained for years in the archives of the Vatican Film Library, was restored and presented at the Venice Film Biennale as early as 2004. With the authoritative comment of the director, some parts of another film shot also in 1911 in the city of Manzoni will also be screened. The presentation, with the attractive title The two “Hells” that shook the world (of cinema) is curated by FAI-Delegation of Lecco, in collaboration with the Province of Lecco. (Thursday 16 September, 9.00 pm, Sala Ticozzi, Via Ongania, 4)
What do Dante, Manzoni and Stoppani have in common?
The mountains of Lecco, replies professor Stefano Motta . A literary provocation (Dante, in fact, never explicitly speaks of our city), a geographical encounter beyond time, a conversation that promises to be curious and interesting the one that the essayist, novelist, original scholar of the Manzoni world will propose at the Dante Festival Lecco .
Dante, Manzoni, Stoppani and the mountains of Lecco (Friday 17 September, 9.00 pm, Palazzo del Commercio, Piazza Garibaldi, 4)
With singing, and in particular Gregorian chants, the festival moves to the municipalities of Calolziocorte and Mandello del Lario.
The medieval shrine of Santa Maria del Lavello will host Amor Domini. The
mercy in Dante and in Gregorian chant, concert by the Ensemble More Anti quo directed by Giovanni Conti. The program focuses on the theme of mercy which, when requested in his youth, his beloved woman finds fulfillment in Mary in the Comedy. The arcane Gregorian melodies are enhanced with suggestive mises en espace. (Saturday 18 September, 9.00 pm, Santa Maria del Lavello, Calolziocorte).
Instead, the Church of San Giorgio with its magnificent frescoes will welcome the Cantori
Gregoriani , one of the most internationally renowned groups in the interpretation of Gregorian chant. Founder and director is Fulvio Rampi , who at the festival proposes The sacred sound. Gregorian chant in the Comedy , relating the musical pieces to the Apocalypse painted on the walls of the church. (Sunday 19 September, 5.00 pm, Church of San Giorgio, Mandello del Lario)
The astrophysicist Sperello Alighieri concludes the days of the festival , a direct descendant of the Poet, who states: “The passion for astronomy is among the very few things I share with him, besides the surname”. In the lecture entitled Dante's cosmography between ancient and modern , the famous scientist will spettacolo with examples how Dante was halfway between ancient beliefs and modern knowledge. The meeting is organized by the Deep Space Amateur Astronomers Group of Lecco.
(Monday 20 September, 9.00 pm and 10.30 pm, Planetario, Corso Matteotti, 32)
And finally I'll tell you about Dante . In the last days of September, space dedicated to schools.
Dante will tell the stories of secondary school students Franco Nembrini , consummate narrator of the Poet and Luigi Garlando , leading sports journalist, author of various children's books, authentic best sellers, including “Go to Hell, Dante!”.
The realization of the event was made possible thanks to the collaboration with institutions such as the Municipality of Mandello and with cultural and social realities of the territory such as Si.MUL, Liceo Classico “A. Manzoni “of Lecco, Deep Space Astrofili Group, Monastery of Santa Maria del Lavello Foundation.
Finally, it should be emphasized the contribution of numerous associations and entrepreneurial realities: CIF Lecco, BCC Valsassina, KOMETA, Rotary Associazione Lecco Le Grigne, ACLI Lecco, Chamber of Commerce Como – Lecco, Confcommercio Lecco, Trattoria Il Portico. Technical partner of Trattoria Numeroosei Lecco.
All events are subject to reservations on www.dantefestivallecco.it, access reserved for holders of Green Coronavirus 19 Certifications.
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