The Week of the Italian Language in the World opened in New York on 25 September with ‘Il suono di Dante’, a new musical work by Mariateresa Sartori. The composition is based on the sound material of the ‘Divine Comedy’, revealing the material dimension of the third Canto of Inferno. It is combined with the totally new track ‘Queste parole di colore oscuro’ by Paolo Marzocchi.
Fom 18 to 22 October there will instead be a series of online talks called ‘Dante oggi’ (Dante today). You will be able to listen to renowned scholars such as Hermann Haller (‘Dante’s Footprints in 21st Century Italian’), Piermario Vescovo (‘La dimensione profetica e anticipatrice di Dante’ – The Prophetic and Anticipatory Dimension of Dante), Luigi Ballerini (talking to the poet and translator of Dante, Mary Jo Bang) and Ernesto Livorni (‘La ricezione di Dante nel Novecento italiano’ – The reception of Dante in twentieth-century Italy).
From 23 October the video ‘Dante in Verona’ will be available online. The video, filmed specifically for the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, shows some of Dante’s locations in Verona together with some of the exhibitions being held in the city in 2021 under the guidance of Tiziana Franco (art historian) and Paolo Pellegrini (linguist and biographer of the poet), both professors at the University of Verona, and Francesca Rossi, director of Verona’s museums.
Finally, starting from 24 October the video ‘Riccardo Muti for Dante’ will be available online. Following Maestro Muti’s homage to Dante with three concerts in Ravenna, Florence and Verona, video footage made available to the Italian Cultural Institute allows us to retrace this musical journey from Giuseppe Verdi (‘Laudi alla Vergine Maria’) to Franz Liszt (‘Dante-Symphonie’), with also ‘Purgatorio’ by Tigran Mansurian, an Armenian composer who was commissioned to write a new piece.
For more information, go to iicnewyork.esteri.it.
