To close out the celebrations for the 200th Anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth, a powerful event was organized for the 2013 edition of the Ravenna Festival. On the same stage of the Alighieri Theatre, Verdi’s three masterpieces in which the theatrical genius of the musician is juxtaposed with the plays of the greatest playwright and poet of all time, William Shakespeare, were presented and analysed in succession: Macbeth (8th,12nd and 15th November), Othello (9th, 13th, 16th November) and Falstaff (10th, 14th and 17th November). Twenty-nine participants selected by the commission formed by Silva Lelli (photographer), Nevio Galeati (writer and journalist), Alessandro Renda (videomaker and actor) came from all over Italy, from Palermo to Turin, for the workshop called ‘VerdiWeb’, which ran alongside Verdi’s Trilogy for the autumn season. They were invited to observe the rehearsals of the Trilogy and explore and document the unique inner workings of the world of theatre from their point of view. The results of this exploration are published on the project’s website (www.verdiweb.it). Held for the second consecutive year, Verdiweb has gained the reputation of a unique and prestigious place to improve one’s creativity, a multimedia workshop, informal yet intensive, where one can explore expressive languages, heighten and improve the five senses, in a near daily routine of research and exploration, simultaneous to what happens in the whole theatrical space, not only on stage, but also in the theatre as a business and a world where many things occur on and off stage.
This is the final project of one of last year’s participants, Giulia Viero, and it’s called “Melodies Beyond Time”.