Questo sito utilizza cookie tecnici, analytics e di terze parti.
Proseguendo nella navigazione accetti l'utilizzo dei cookie.

Preferenze cookies

“What is it about Parma? A Look at Italy’s Opera-Crazed Town”

“What is it about Parma? A Look at Italy’s Opera-Crazed Town“

Tuesday, December 6th at 6pm

Italian Cultural Institute

500 N Michigan Avenue, Suite 1450

What is it about Parma? An opera town like no other, Parma and its magnificent Teatro Regio enjoy fame — some would say infamy — as the “toughest”, most passionate and best-informed opera audience in the world. Film-maker August Ventura will share some extraordinary findings that have surfaced during research for his own film, as well as some remarkable filmed excerpts — some of which have not been seen in over half a century. These clips will present abundant performance and rehearsal footage, but will also provide a fascinating glimpse into the uniquely working-class milieu of Parma’s opera-mad populace. Mr. Ventura will provide an intriguing look into their source and their re-discovery along with some of his own interview footage of the people who were there.

A self-styled “Verdi dévotée”, August Ventura has explored the unique opera culture of Parma, Italy and its cult-like reverence for il Maestro’s 27 operas in three feature articles for Opera News. These have formed the basis of “27: The Verdi Documentary Film Project”, an ongoing, not-for-profit initiative created to promote and advance Verdi’s “enduring legacy of music, charity, patriotism, honour, grace, and reason” via Verdi-themed articles, lectures and events, and using in the medium of documentary film. The full-length documentary film, “27”, scheduled for completion in 2017, has been invited for presentation as a work-in-progress at such venues as The Metropolitan Opera Club, The Knickerbocker Club, The Century Club, The National Arts Club, Sarasota Opera, Teatro Regio’s Festival Verdi, Vassar College, and at NYU’s Casa Italiana, where it was the Inaugural Event at the 5-day Bicentennial Symposium organized by the American Institute of Verdi Studies. A recent event he conceived and organized for Parma’s incomparable Club dei 27, was the subject of an article in The New Yorker, “Honoring Verdi on Seventy-Second Street”. Visit: 27adocumentary.com

Free and open to the public.

RSVP at https://27verdifilmproject.eventbrite.com