The Barber of Seville: the great opera in the Tuscany summer.

Innovation and search, style and prestige on the new calendar of the OperaFestival 2008 season. Among these events we have to remark the presence of the Gioachino Rossini’s opera buffa “The Barber of Seville“, that will be presented both in the charming atmosphere of the medicean villa of Cafaggiolo (near Barberino di Mugello) on Friday 18th of July and in the Boboli Gardens in Florence on Wednesday 30th of July.

The theme of Rossini’s opera is based on the first of the plays from the Figaro trilogy, by French playwright Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, while Mozart’s opera “Le nozze di Figaro” - composed 30 years earlier, in 1786 - is based on the second part of the same trilogy.
Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” was produced on (more…)

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Festa del redentore (The Redemeer Day)

The Redentore began as a celebration to give thanks for the end of the terrible plague of 1576, which killed 50,000 people (25-30 per cent of the population), including the great painter Tiziano Vecellio (Titian). The Festa del Redentore remains a major festival in the Venetian calendar, celebrated on the third Sunday of July. The most important place of the festival is Giudecca, one of the islands of Venice, situated to the south of the city center, where the Andrea Palladdio’s Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore (Church of the Most Holy Redemeer) was built.

On Saturday 19th of July, the eve of the festival, fireworks of the most varied colours and shapes are let off. Preparations start early in the morning when people begin to decorate their boats, or the small wooden terraces on rooftops from where they can admire the fireworks. From the early afternoon, Saint Mark’s basin fills with up to 2,000 boats of all kinds, decorated with balloons and garlands: the water surface is full of thousands of boats and lights, and thousands of Venetians awaiting the fireworks while dining on the boats. Around 10 o’clock at night (more…)

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Visit Mugello: discovering Florence Renaissance

From 8th of June until the 30th of November a great exhibition on Renaissance will be organised in Mugello in four different historical locations.
A very low price shuttle service from Florence will be available to go to the different places of the exhibition as a one day tour. To join this event it’s necessary to buy a “Mugello Card” (5 Euros, 3,5 Euros reduced) which give access to Palazzo Medici Riccardi (Florence), to most of the museums present in Mugello and a 10% of discount with all agreed restaurants, shops and hotels.
Furthermore, on weekends, a free guide will take partecipants through the exhibition. For group reservations are required.

In Palazzo Medici Riccardi it’s possible to assist at the “introduction” of the exhibition, with the
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Milano Moda Uomo presents new 2009 spring-summer collection

Once again high fashion is shown in Italy, once again the destination chosen to this purpose is the city of Milan.
Well, the Italian capital has been turned again into the meeting point of famous high fashion stylists who are there to show their 2009 spring-summer collections.

Starting from Saturday the 21st, the best prêt-à -porter clothing for men and the most famous accessories brands for spring-summer 2009, will be shown on Italian fashion runways until June 24th. According to the final program, published by Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana - the body dealing with organization and management of this event - fashion shows started on Saturday 21st of June with Gaetano Navarra, during the same day followed by Missoni, Jil Santander and Versace. Sunday 22nd was the time of famous stylists such as Salvatore Ferragamo, Gianfranco Ferrè, Prada, Roberto Cavalli. Again, today Coveri, Biagiotti, Gucci, Moschino and Krizia, arriving to Tuesday the 24th, when you will find among the others, Armani, Fendi and Marni. Byblos will close the fair.

As every year happens

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The spectacular Luminara of San Ranieri in Pisa

Again this year the city of Pisa, in the night of the 16th of June, keeps its annual date with the Luminara on the occasion of the feast of its patron Saint Ranieri.

Pisa’s citizens celebrate this day by decorating the streets of the city with a particular lighting, which gives name to the event. More than about seventy-thousand wax candles are put into smooth and transparent glasses and fixed onto wooden white-painted frames, which are placed in order to highlight the shape of palaces, bridges, churches and towers overlooking the banks of the river Arno. Thanks to the Luminara, also the Leaning Tower of Pisa becomes (more…)

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Francis Bacon in Palazzo Reale

Extended until 28th of August the exhibition that Palazzo Reale in Milan, in cooperation with Skira and Arthemisia organizes about Francis Bacon. He is considered the last of the great 20th century masters and the one who could transmit the uneasiness of the modern man in painting.

With this great event, the city of Milan wants to celebrate the centenary of Bacon’s birth that will occurr next year.

The exposition, handled by Professor Rudy Chiappini, shows in an exhaustive way the artistic career of the irish artist through its works coming from the most important museums and collections worldwide.

The core of the artistic display provides for the exposition of over one hundred works, almost all as yet unknown here in Italy, including eighty-two paintings and about fifteen drawings, plus as many objects that are part of the archive material carrying the artist’s mark. More than fifty years of career described by a large number of works which range from paintings to sketches and pictures.

A room of Palazzo Reale presents, for the first time in Italy, the photographic reproduction of Bacon’s studio of London, which was the little microcosm where he lived between 1961 and 1992, the chaotic studio where he kept all his books, papers, sketches, colours, canvases, photographs and notes, and everything else that could be a source of inspiration for him. The show opens with a set of important works on paper, which were only found after the artist’s death and have never been displayed in Italy before. Then it continues with the paintings dating back to the years after the Second World War, when Bacon made himself known at an international level thanks to the “Studies for Figures” and to his “Heads”.

Special attention is given to document Bacon’s activity in the ’50s, which was devoted to portraits made just for his friends or made to order. These paintings are dwelled by blurred and ghastly figures, desfigured and deformed faces and bodies disappearing into the darkness of the background. During the following decade, his characters started appearing in a more definite and lit space and they gain volume and expressiveness. In the great triptychs of the ’70s, his care for individual subjects had become slightly exasperating.

Among the works exposed, we mention in particular “Three Studies of the Male Back” and “Triptych”. Only during the later years of his life, Bacon stopped “fighting” with the characters of his paintings, showing their inner essence and transforming them into a few spots of colour clotted on neutral backgrounds.

A voyage (more…)

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Giacomo Balla: the story of an artist on exhibition in Milan

Until 2nd June 2008 Palazzo Reale in Milan will host an exceptional exhibition dedicated to one of the greatest representatives of Italian Futurism: Giacomo Balla.

At the exhibition called “Giacomo Balla - La Modernità Futurista” (”Giacomo Balla - The Futurist Modernity“) it will be possible admire the whole Balla’s futuristic production, movement to which the artist conformed later than his contemporaries. The exhibition is founded on the study and the analysis of his futuristic artworks, true fount of energy.

Virtuosities of shapes and colours, broken shapes which give movement to the pictures. Artworks which still talk about sensations and shivers, maybe because of Balla’s previous artworks.

Spectators can admire about 200 artworks on exhibition, and for this occasion they will have the chance to retrace the whole artistic itinerary of the painter, highlighting the crucial moments of change.

The exhibition’s journey (more…)

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Torino World Design Capital 2008

In 2008 Turin has been elected the first World Capital Design by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.

Indeed, Turin has been recognised as one of the cities which mostly distinguishes itself by having an international leading role in the area of design and because since many years it hosts several artistic workshops and many centres of style and design which contribute to the spread of this branch.

Since years the capital of Piedmont region is a leading planning design centre, because it is linked to a long entrepreneurial tradition, it is engaged in the urban renewal and it claims the image of an industrial Turin (the new European Turin!) by carring out design projects characterized by a particular attention for innovation and a strong creativity.

Proud of being deserving the desired qualification of World Capital Design, in the year of its charge the city of Turin has prepared a long list of aims and projects to develop in the course of 2008.

The main goal of these projects (more…)

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Sebastiano del Piombo on Exhibition in Rome

The city of Rome is proud to host in the wonderful halls of Palazzo Venezia until 18th May , the artworks which belong to one of the 16th century greatest Italian artists, Sebastiano del Piombo.

The exhibition, the first monosgraph dedicated do the painter, goes over about 80 artworks, from the artist’ paintings (paintings on board, small paintings on slate, life size portraits) to other artworks by comparison, useful to understand and to underline the artistic genius Del Piombo.

Moreover, in order to allow the spectator to retrace the artistic itinerary of the painter, the exposure is branched, with a path which goes from the first lightful, great and coloured artworks, to the last productions, abstract geometrical shapes dipped with dull shades.

Sebastiano Luciani (this is the real name of the artist), was born in Venice in 1484, and spent most of his artistic life in Rome, where in 1531 it was given to him the qualification of ‘papal piombatore’ (minister of justice who took care of papal bulls and apostolic letters), from which the nickname “del Piombo” results, by which he’s known all over the world. (more…)

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Art in U.S.A…. but Made in Italy!

After a sort of cultural closing in the relationship between Italy and United States of America, we can look at a new collaboration and cultural comparison between these two countries, now.

This new chapter of the current cultural History started with the return in Italy of one of the most important Italian artistic production’s masterpieces: the Vase of Eufronio, an artwork (dating back to the 5th century a.C.) found in 1973 in an ancient tomb in Certeveri. The Vase, which finally comes back home, is currently exposed at the Quirinale, and is only the first of 40 masterpieces, stealed from Italy in the previous years by the several clandestine commercial transactions.These works were exposed since a long time to the Getty Museum.

But this episode represents only the beginning of a new relationship between Italy and USA. Infact, very soon, some prestigious masterpieces by Gian Lorenzo Bernini - one of the most important Italian artists in ‘600 - will travel across the Ocean to be exposed for the first time in United States.

By the deal between the Italian cultural Minister and the Getty Museum of Los Angeles, a unique expo will start, dedicated to the italian painter and entitled “Bernini and the born of the Baroque painting portraiture”. (more…)

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