Un Ospite di Venezia-11-2023

Music and the Theatre
For the entertainment page, the focus is on the opening of La Fenice Theatre Season.
Featuring 13 opera titles, one ballet and 19 symphonic events, it will start on 24 November
with the premiere of Les Contes d’Hoffmann opera by Jacques Offenbach.
Also on this month’s calendar for La Fenice season, but hosted at the Malibran Theatre,
may we point out two special evenings dedicated to ballet, for the 2023 Venezia
in Danza cycle: Giselle and other stories with the étoiles from the GaertnerPlatz
Theater in Munich, an exclusive European premiere, and I Maria, She Callas dedicated
to the great soprano on her birth centenary, with the Venice Tocnadanza Company.
Also for music lovers, we may recall the Luigi Nono Festival, now reaching its sixth
edition: beginning from 7 November; the event will celebrate 30 years of the Luigi
Nono Archive Foundation, dedicated to this well-known Venetian composer and
writer of the Twentieth century. The Festival, which will take place with various
meetings throughout the month, will be titled LISTEN.
Finally, amongst concerts, for the Giorgio Cini Foundation we may point out the Music
at San Giorgio cycle at the suggestive “lo Squero” Auditorium overlooking the
lagoon, with three evenings presented by Asolo Musica.
For prose, the focus is instead on the Carlo Goldoni Resident Theatre, which recently
celebrated its 400 years of activity (1622-2022). Its latest Season is resuming
this month, with Waiting for king Lear directed by Alessandro Preziosi, the first of
six classically inspired shows which will make up the 2023-24 billboard.
The following title will characterise the Theatre’s second trend-thread, giving space
and voice to “Words of the present”, with texts written and directed by contemporary
artists.
The stage will be opened by Lucia Calamaro, among the most talented playwrights
on the national scene. Boomers, the most recent play by Marco Paolini, also fits the
same thread, focusing on the older generation, between reality and imagination.
Traditions
It has always distinguished this month in Venice: it is the Fête of the Madonna della
Salute or of Health.
On 21 November, for almost four centuries, the city has been celebrating the end
of the plague that occurred in 1631 thanks to the intercession of the Virgin Mary,
invoked by the Doge and the people a year earlier.
A church and a Madonna, depicted in an ancient painting arrived from Candia (present-day
Crete), are the symbols of what, even now, the whole city honours with a
pilgrimage and a timeless rite: lighting a candle to the Virgin, as a thanksgiving and
request for protection.
For the occasion, a boatbridge
will be set up to facilitate
access from the St
Mark area; one can attend
the solemn mass, visit the
seventeenth-century basilica
to admire the famous “Black
Madonna” and the extraordinary
works; stroll among
the crowded stands of the
surrounding area or have a
walk around the picturesque
Punta della Dogana and the
Zattere Quay, and also taste
the typical dish of the moment,
the “castradina”.
Editoriale | Editorial
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