The “Unexpected Italy: a celebration of Italian culture” Festival organised by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in partnership with the Italian Embassy and Cultural Institute in Washington D.C. closed its programme of events on 1 June with “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini” by Sergei Rachmaninoff, “Antiche arie e danze Suite n.2” by Ottorino Respighi and the Sinfonia n.2 by Alberto Casella, conducted by Maestro Gianandrea Noseda. The Festival, which opened on 3 May, ranked among the most successful cultural events in the American capital. Italy and Italian music were the stars of a unique season, with a range of exceptional high-quality events embracing numerous genres, ranging from the best to the least known, drawn from contemporary and classical repertories, thus offering an “unexpected” perspective of the Italian music scene.
In addition to the concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maestro Noseda (the Musical Director of the NSO also directed the Stabat Mater by Rossini and the Dante Symphony by Liszt), the programme included Puccini’s Tosca with the Washington National Opera directed by Speranza Scappucci; performances by Chiara Izzi, Vinicio Capossela, Paolo Angeli, Joe Barbieri, Simona Molinari, Mario Biondi, Doctor 3, Ludovico Einaudi and the show “Colors” by Compagnia TPO & Teatro Metastasio. The creativity and brilliance of the Italian artists also won the heart of New York, where Maestro Noseda directed Rossini and Liszt at Carnegie Hall.
Almost 30,000 spectators attended the events on programme at the Festival and 18,000 people followed the performances through the Kennedy Center’s social media channels, bearing witness to the admiration and love for Italian culture, even in the forms less known in the United States of America.
The closing of the Festival’s programme also marks the end of the “Italian Spring” that has characterised the artistic and cultural life of the American capital in the first months of 2019. Still open to the public is the exhibition at the National Gallery of Art to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Tintoretto, the “Queens of Egypt” exhibition organised at the National Geographic Museum in cooperation with the Egyptian Museum of Turin and the exhibition by Enrico David at the Hirshhorn Museum.
