In honour of the 150° anniversary of Giacomo Puccini‘s birth, a motion-picture exhibition called “PUCCINI AL CINEMA” was organized, created and developped by the Prof. Pier Marco De Santi, Italian movie-picture history lecturer at the University of Pisa and strongly desired by the Puccinian Festival Foundation.
“Puccini al cinema” is taking place from the 28th of June until the 30th of September at the Auditorium of the New Open-Air Theatre of Torre del Lago Puccini (recently built, dedicated to Lucca’s composer) and it is the first collection of motion-picture operas related to Puccini: more than forty films, some of them from the dumb cinema, included the untold film of Puccini’s funeral.
The review is divided into two parts:

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

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

The Lucca Summer Festival comes back with the music program including concerts of many Italian and international artists and it will take place inside the city walls, in the old center of Lucca, “Piazza Napoleone“.
We can reveal some information about the artists: the Patty Pravo Italian tour includes a reinterpretation of the song “La bambola” and Leonard Cohen will have a comeback with a worldwide tour after fifteen years of inactivity. Ennio Morricone will conduct the “Roma sinfonietta” orchestra, the “New roman lyric symphonic orchestra” and the “Claudio Casini” chorus of the Tor Vergata university. At the Festival there will be the Young Summer Competition (21-07-2008), the music contest for rookie bands and lead singers that will go live on Match Music (Sky tv).

This is the definitive concert calendar:

In the works from 7th to 12th of July there will be the fifth edition of TRAFFIC – TORINO FREE FESTIVAL with six days of free concerts. As well as last years best Italian and international music will be the first act of the festival, which according to the tradition, will be totally free.
Traffic is a free music festival which yearly happens in Turin since 2004 and it is organized on several nights, with concerts displaced in all the parks of the city of Turin. The epicentre of the festival, where the most important concerts will take place, is the park of Pellerina.
But Traffic is not the only one of the most important Italian musical events, but it is also characterized by the wealth of the program, including transversal activities in all the parts of the city. In fact the more interesting peculiarity that characterized the Torino Free Festival since the beginning, is the basic theme: the one of 2008 will be Punk, and in honour of this musical evocation we could see on the stage the