A rich program of initiatives for the month of March at the Italian Cultural Institute of Sydney hosting on the 19th a concert of popular music of southern Italy with two extraordinary artists from Salento, Enza Pagliara and Dario Muci, and on March 20th a day devoted to Raphael, on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of his death. The concert of popular music will display the result of the hard work of reconstruction of forgotten repertoires from the Salento musical tradition, collected by the living voice of the singers of Salento. As guests of the Cultural Institute, the two musicians will display their new “Marea” project, a show of music and stories through an accurate analysis of texts, vocal techniques and musical styles.
Painting will be discussed on March 20th when the art expert Costantino D’Orazio and art historians John Gagné and Lisa Beaven will illustrate the life and works of Raffaello Sanzio. At the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Costantino D’Orazio, with his lecture on “The fabulous Raphael”, will tell about the villas, palaces, private papal apartments and secret loggias that house the magnificent frescoes by the Renaissance master. Gagné will analyse the first years of the master’s life, who from an early age began to show an exquisite receptivity and a variety of influences: not only of his father, the Umbrian master Giovanni, but also, among many others, of Perugino, Pinturicchio and Signorelli. Beaven, on the other hand, will shed light on the decades following Raphael’s death when the desire to obtain a painting by the great painter became almost an obsession, leading to a real frenzy of collecting.
