From 12 to 22 January 2018 Tehran hosted the first round of cultural events organized by the Italian Embassy in Iran and featured in the programme ” Italy, Cultures and the Mediterranean 2018″. The programme was developed in conjunction with the country’s most important cultural event, the Fajr International Film, Theatre and Music Festival .
The Festival’s Music Programme opened with a concert by Marco Beasley and his Quartet (tenor, lute, guitar and percussions) at the Niavaran Complex. The Neapolitan Maestro performed a sophisticated repertoire of popular Southern music from the 17th cen. and took the audience on a special artistic and cultural journey that brought the the Italian and Iranian popular song traditions together thus getting to the intimate meaning of each piece beyond words.
A packed Vahdat Theatre hosted on 19 January a concert of the Francesco Cafiso Jazz Qartet. Cafiso, a young and talented saxophonist from Sicily, performed a programme combining standard jazz pieces and his own works. The success was extraordinary and the audience showed its enthusiasm for the Quartet’s performance especially when Cafiso gave his own jazz interpretation of a very well-known Iranian traditional piece.
On that same day, but in a different, and equally packed hall of the prestigiousVahdat Theatr, Luca Ciarla, a violinist from the Region Molise, held his concert.
From 19 to 22 January the Fajr International Theatre Festival featured an avant-gard show inspired by Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’, staged by the Italian Company “Teatro Potlach”, under the direction of Maestro Pino Di Buduo and with Iranian actors in its cast. The Company, which performed in Iran back in 2012 and 2016, took the audience on a symbolic journey across the ‘invisible memories’ hidden behind prison bars.
Qasr is now a museum, that spectacular stage decoration and choreographies have turned into an extraordinary evocative source of emotions for Iranian audiences.
Finally on 25 January, Maestro Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, held a seminar on the Italian contemporary theatre at Iran Shahr, a venue located in the artistic and cultural heart of Tehran. Ali Shams, a well-known Iranian theatre director, attended the seminar.
