Having reached the halfway point of a rich journey divided into various sections, The Pietra Theatre Lyric Festival has meanwhile concluded an important segment in that small jewel of Roman antiquity, the Villa di Terme Vigliatore, dating back to the 2nd century BC.: his homage, in music, to the philosopher of asystematicity, Manlio Sgalambro, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth.
Last heir of the ancient Cynic school, atheist, nihilist coherently with his thought, he left no philosophical legacy and could or wanted to leave nothing; if anything he left nothing as his ultra-philosophical legacy. The thought, the praise, the rhapsody of nothing. The relief valve in his grave age was music, the Dionysian vein of our time, and above all the partnership with Frank Battiato; here the song «is the shortest work of the spirit and yet it possesses all its solemnity». The song is true theory, and under the «heart mush» of the syrupy verses it addresses the theme of the century, the death of the spirit.
For this special occasion, the new format dedicated to the spirituality of Franco Battiato recorded a real triumph, both among the public and critics. Spiritual Beatfor vocal ensemble, strings, Celtic harp, percussion, which combined the energy of the stone with the mysticism of the melody of the famous Etna singer-songwriter; a journey where myth, nature, suggestion and dreaminess interact in a vortex of emotions.
After the success at the Andromeda Theater, the work of the “shepherd of the stars” Lorenzo Reina, and in the archaeological area of Naxos, the first Greek colony in Sicily, the concert event was greeted with ovations also at the Roman Villa of Terme Vigliatore in a crescendo of Attic beauty and vocal and musical sumptuousness. Franco Battiato has crossed the world of popular song enriching it beyond measure, intercepting many listeners and as many artists of different paths, but always close to his sensitivity.
The concert conceived by the Coro Lirico Siciliano turned out to be an embrace supported by the expressive power of a vast and astonishing art.; a program focused on Battiato’s best-known, but also most intimate and spiritual musical production: Prospettiva Nevsky, Segnali di Vita, Strade parallele, Povera patria, L’era del cinghiale bianco, L’oceano di silenzio, Cucurucù, La Cura, Centro di gravita permanente, Voglio vederti danzare, etc. were the songs that paid homage to the mystical and universal art of the famous Etna singer-songwriter.
A large group of voices, Leonora Ilieva, Antonino Giacobbe, Alberto Munafò, under the passionate and vibrant direction of Francesco Costa, gave the musical pages that made Battiato an authentic “master” of poetry and feeling a unique and captivating guise for a concert event that marked a fundamental stage in the cultural life of three sites steeped in myth and history.
The Festival Lirico dei Teatri di Pietra will continue at a fast pace with a rich itinerant calendar, until the grand finale, on September 22nd at the Teatro Antico in Catania, with the concert of a bel canto singer of the caliber of Diana Damrau, the greatest lyric-light soprano of our time, for the first time in Sicily.
