Ravenna Festival: The Roads to Friendship
Milan, July 5th, 2001 - Maestro Riccardo Muti, the La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, the soprano Barbara Frittoli and the bass Ferruccio Furlanetto will bring the Ravenna Festival 2001 to a close with two concerts in Armenia and Turkey.
The event has been made possible through co-operation with Pirelli and was first launched in 1998 with a concert in Beirut. It has continued over the years, marked by shared enthusiasm and a common will to succeed, first in Jerusalem and then in Moscow. This year's initiative marks two further milestones along the " Roads to Friendship" of the Ravenna Festival. The two concerts will take place on Monday, July 23rd at the Erevan Palace of Art and Sport and on Tuesday July 24th at the Istanbul Convention & Exhibition Centre.
Once again the La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Riccardo Muti, will top the bill. Their programme will exclusively feature works by Verdi, and the execution of the Te Deum and Stabat Mater will lend particularly deep significance - as ever in keeping with the ecumenical spirit that has always characterised the Roads to Friendship - to the solemn celebrations of 1700 years of Christianity in Armenia. In the first concert the Chamber Choir of Erevean will join the La Scala Philharmonic Choir in the performance of the two most intense pieces of the Four Sacred Pieces, giving voice to the ancient and tormented spirituality of a people from a far-flung border. The following day in Istanbul (the ancient Byzantium), a city well known for the historical roots it shares with Ravenna and for the same inimitable architecture of its Byzantine basilicas, it will be the turn of the TRT Istanbul Youth Chorus to join the La Scala Chorus, once more underlining the solidarity that such occasions can create between artists from different nations
Following the huge success of last year's live broadcast from the Bolshoi Theatre, the Istanbul concert will provide another opportunity for a worldwide audience to enjoy this special event as it unfolds. The July 24th concert will be broadcast live and exclusively in the www.pirelli.com site. The streamed link will begin at 7.30pm in Istanbul (6.30pm Italian local time) and will last until the end of the performance.
RAI, the Italian State TV Company, will once more be there in support of the Ravenna Festival and will contribute to the promotion of the whole project in various ways through its radio and TV media. Radio 3 will follow the key highlights of the friendship link-up, with special reports from Armenia and Turkey, right up to the live broadcast of the Istanbul concert on Tuesday, July 24th, at 6.30pm (Italian time). At 11.20pm on Friday, July 27th, RAI1 will broadcast highlights of the two concerts along with special reports and interviews recorded in Armenia and in Turkey under the guidance of TV presenter, Bruno Vespa.