The start of the new season: the Mito SettembreMusica festival gets underway

From 6 to 20 September, the 20th edition of the Mito SettembreMusica festival gets underway in Milan and Turin; under new artistic direction from Speranza Scappucci, principal guest conductor at the Royal Opera House in London. In Verona, one of Europe’s leading orchestras, the Staatskapelle Dresden, will open the Settembre dell’Accademia festival with its principal conductor, Daniele Gatti; Merano will host the orchestra’s only Italian dates on its European tour. Villa Panza in Varese, managed by the F.A.I., is transformed into a soundscape, from dawn to dusk. In Naples, there is an excellent opportunity to see the ‘musical festival’ *Festa di Piedigrotta*, by the great playwright Raffaele Viviani: his choral masterpiece, this folk festival paints a vivid picture of the voices, trades and masks of early 20th-century Naples, blending song, comedy and melancholy.

Pino-Miraglia

The 20th edition of the Mito SettembreMusica festival runs from the 6th to the 20th. On the 6th, La Scala opens with Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’, featuring the RAI Orchestra, the Teatro Regio Torino Chorus and the Teatro Regio Torino Children’s Choir, conducted by Simone Young; there will be a repeat performance on the 7th in Turin, at the RAI Auditorium. Composed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, rebuilt after the bombings of the Second World War, the ‘War Requiem’ is both a symbol of a divided humanity seeking reconciliation and an ideal manifestation of Harmonia, which is the theme of this year’s festival. An edition in which tradition and modernity engage in an authentic dialogue, ranging from early music to the music of our own time. Alongside the iconic venues in the two cities – La Scala, the Giovanni Agnelli Auditorium at the Lingotto, the Arturo Toscanini Rai Auditorium, the Teatro Dal Verme and the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire – the festival extends to theatres, churches, cultural venues and less central neighbourhoods. This geographical expansion brings significant music to a variety of venues, helping to bridge distances, broaden participation and foster new listening habits. Milan and Turin are thus the two hubs of a single project.

From the 8th to the 13th, the Trianon Viviani Theatre continues to host ‘Viviani per strada’, the project exploring the plays of the great Neapolitan playwright. Having previously staged one-act plays in which the people take centre stage, the renowned Neapolitan actor and director Nello Mascia has chosen to bring to the stage one of Viviani’s most famous works, centred on the most eagerly awaited and beloved traditional festival. In *Festa di Piedigrotta* (1919), a ‘folk festival’ in two acts featuring verse, prose and music by Raffaele Viviani, with musical arrangements by Eugenio Bennato, the author depicts a wounded, broken and disoriented humanity, which has a desperate need to live after emerging from the tragedy of a devastating world war. For Mascia, the characters’ feelings and anxieties seem to be reflected in contemporary reality, which is marked by a new ‘world war in pieces’, as Pope Francis has described it.