A trip to Bayreuth for the famous Wagner festival
In Milan, concerts on the Cathedral Terraces and early music at the Milano ArteMusica Festival
In Milan in August, there are always oases where you can find refuge. On the Duomo Terraces at sunset, for example, for the Thursday concerts, right next to the Madunina. Or in Milan’s splendid churches, for the early music of the Milano ArteMusica Festival. It’s a complete change of atmosphere in Bayreuth, at the festival founded by Wagner 150 years ago, for a new production of *The Ring of the Nibelung*.
Milan
Every Thursday evening, until 10 September, we’ll be heading up to the Duomo’s terraces, where the cathedral comes to life through music. The roof of the Duomo offers a unique view of the city – it is the only cathedral in the world with a roof that is entirely accessible to the public. Alongside established performers, we will also hear from final-year students at the Milan Conservatoire, with whom the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo has renewed its collaboration. On 30 July at 8.30 pm, Luca Ranieri, principal viola of the Rai Orchestra, will perform alongside Enxhi Nini on the violin. “O mia bela Madunina che te brillet de luntan/ Tuta d’ora e piscinina, ti te dominet Milan”.
On 28 July, at the Church of S. Maria della Sanità, the concerts of the 20th Milano ArteMusica Festival continue; the festival runs until 27 August. The soloist is violinist Leila Schayegh, one of the most distinguished and award-winning interpreters of the Baroque repertoire, with a programme themed ‘For solo violin: The path to Bach’. Following the usual break between late July and early August, the festival returns with the traditional Ferragosto Concert: at 4.00 pm in the Sanctuary of Santa Maria dei Miracoli near San Celso, featuring the Vanvitelli Quartet in ‘A Baroque Musical Contest’, a unique ‘musical duel’ between Scarlatti and Handel. The following Saturday, 22 August, will feature a packed day themed ‘Bach’s Passion’, bringing together the Basilica of Santa Maria della Passione and Johann Sebastian Bach, with four concerts on the programme.
Bayreuth
At the legendary Festival, founded by Wagner and dedicated to his works, a new production of *The Ring of the Nibelung* is being staged this year; three cycles, from 27 July to 16 August. For 150 years, *The Ring* has been continuously reinterpreted in Bayreuth.
To mark the Festival’s 150th anniversary, the focus will not be limited to staging the musical drama; instead, the entire history of its reception will take centre stage, through a visual dimension that evolves, expands, is reconfigured and even contradicts itself. For the first time in the Festival’s history, artificial intelligence will play a part in the performance, not as a character, but as a creative and visual force. The singers will take centre stage. Their bodies become fixed points in a shifting visual cosmos of light, matter, history and associations of ideas, surrounded by projections that fragment, change ceaselessly and merge with one another. The projections will go beyond traditional stage design: they become the reflective surface of a 150-year-long debate. The artificial intelligence that generates them has learnt from an endless number of images, voices, documents and productions. There will therefore not be a single ‘Ring’, but many: the national myth, the socio-political divide, the explosive power of art, the romantic utopia, the deconstructed shadow. Each performance will be different, because images and associations will never be static. Artificial intelligence becomes a mirror of collective memory and, at the same time, a surface onto which the questions of our time are projected: who tells the story? Who creates the images? And to whom do they belong? The stage is transformed into a laboratory of perception: a space in which musical theatre is not merely performed, but explored.
