Kicking off Sept. 5 at rich program of Dante celebrations in Ravenna

Kicking off on September 5, 2020 in Ravenna will be the celebrations of the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death: Viva Dante - Ravenna 2020-2021 includes a rich program of events involving the city, the region and all of Italy until September 2021. Opening the celebrations will be the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, while closing them on Sunday, September 12, 2021, will be Riccardo Muti with a concert as part of a path of sharing among Dante’s cities, which in the following days will be held in Florence and Verona.

Institutional, literary, exhibition, performance, educational and research events proposed both to the local community and to all the citizens of Italy and the world and organized by the Municipality of Ravenna, with the support of the Emilia Romagna Region, the contribution of the Dante Committee of Ravenna, and the involvement of the city’s cultural excellences established nationally and internationally.

On the evening of Sept. 5, in the presence of the president of the Republic, at 8:30 p.m., the tomb and the nearby Braccioforte quadrangle will be reopened, at the end of a restoration project that has returned Dante’s tomb, designed by architect Camillo Morigia, to its original appearance. Organized by the Ravenna Manifestazioni Foundation, before the unveiling of the restored monument, the vocal ensemble Voces Suaves will perform Quivi sospiri by Luzzasco Luzzaschi from the Second Book of Madrigals for Five Voices (1576) where verses from Canto III of Inferno are set to music; and at the end of the ceremony Io sono amore angelico by Joanne Metcalf from Il nome del bel fior (1988) where verses from Canto XXXIII of Paradise are set to music. Later, in St. Francis Square, pianist Yulianna Avdeeva will perform Fantasia quasi Sonata - Après une Lecture de Dante, by Franz Liszt, while baritone Luca Micheletti and pianist Davide Cavalli will perform Il conte Ugolino from Canto XXXIII of Inferno, by Gaetano Donizetti.

In closing, actor Elio Germano will read Canto XXXIII of Paradiso. The entire event will be streamed live and will also be visible on a big screen in Piazza del Popolo.

The Ravenna Manifestazioni Foundation will offer international live performance projects throughout the year. In particular, the Autumn Trilogy with the world premiere of a ballet icon like Sergei Polunin; the 2021 edition of the Ravenna Festival; and the Dante triptych Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, which has already seen its first two stages in the past years and will culminate in 2021 with the performance of Paradiso created by Teatro delle Albe - Ravenna Teatro, with the support of the Municipality of Ravenna, commissioned by Ravenna Manifestazioni. In addition to this, Teatro delle Albe - Ravenna Teatro will also offer numerous performance events of an international nature.

On September 11, at 5 p.m., there will be an opening at the Classense Library Inclusa est flamma. Ravenna 1921: the Secentenary of Dante’s Death, the first exhibition of the exhibition project Dante. The Eyes and the Mind, curated by the institutions Museo d’arte della città di Ravenna and Classense.

On Sept. 13, from 9:30 a.m., the annual anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death, this year the 699th, will be celebrated. After mass in the basilica of San Francesco (where Dante’s funeral was held) there will be a choral action by Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari (Ravenna Teatro - Teatro delle Albe) with the citizens of the Cantiere Dante, the offering by the City of Florence of oil for the votive lamp at the tomb and a prologue by Carlo Ossola, president of the National Dante Committee.
The whole day will be documented by Alex Majoli, a photographer from Ravenna, a full member of the Magnum Photos agency since 2001 and president from 2011 to 2014, who will make a video.

From September 14, 2020, a canto from the Comedy will be read every day at Dante’s Tomb, in the initiative L’ora che volge il disio.

As anticipated, 2020 and 2021 will also leave Dante traces in the city itself, thanks to dedicated structural interventions. Starting with the restored Braccioforte sepulchre and quadrarchus, this will be followed by the redevelopment of the nearby Piazza Caduti, scheduled for September this year, which will be the subject of a larger redevelopment project. In September 2021, a contemporary mosaic art trail will also be created in the Silence Zone. By the end of 2020, the new Dante Museum and by spring 2021 Casa Dante will also be inaugurated in the current Casa Farini, a short walk from the museum and tomb. With regard to the former, a scientific committee has outlined a project of rearrangement that intends to give unity to the exhibition and fruition of the contents: an exhibition route in which the existing heritage will be accompanied by innovative technologies.

The aim of the Casa Dante project is to integrate the museum with a dedicated exhibition area in collaboration with national and international museum institutions, an educational depository/laboratory for non-displayed objects, a space for resting, reading and reflection in the courtyard and garden, as well as a specialized bookstore and a Design Gallery, with bookshop and visitors center, which intends to dialogue with the world of industrial design and visual communication.

Also among the protagonists of Dante’s seventh centenary is theAlma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna. From March 2021, under the coordination of Professor Marco Bazzocchi, a national event will be held on the occasion of Dante’s Danthesis on Dante and contemporary poetry.

Also planned is an important series of conferences, and in this framework the international congress has been organized that from May 26-29, 2021 will bring all those in the world who have studied, according to different perspectives, Dante’s legacy to confront each other in Ravenna on the latest research outcomes. Public meetings with well-known Dante scholars, from Teodolinda Barolini to Zygmunt Baranski, from Lina Bolzoni to Emilio Pasquini, are also planned.

Great reinforcement is then given to research activities and preliminary studies for the preservation of Dante’s heritage; a specific agreement is being established regarding the preservation of material evidence, research and study, with the aim of identifying the best preservation protocols for the Tomb as a whole.A dense dialogue with schools in the provincial territory is planned, and there will be numerous literary initiatives: among all, the historic Letture Classensi, which will retrace in the biennium 2020/2021 the more than fifty years of their history, the Conversazioni Dantesche, dedicated this year to the multifaceted theme of contagion, and the unprecedented Night of Poetry, with readings and musical performances with a Dante theme, curated by Scrittura Festival and Bronson Produzioni, which will also pay homage to Dante through the experimental music festival Transmission.

For more information and to see a chronological list of the main events, exhibitions, as well as the program of Ravenna Manifestations, Teatro delle Albe - Ravenna Teatro and Scrittura Festival and Bronson, visit vivadante.it

Kicking off Sept. 5 at rich program of Dante celebrations in Ravenna

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