The name had already been circulating for a few months, but the official announcement only arrived yesterday: Mario Incudine is the new artistic director of the Tindari Festival. The singer, actor and multi-instrumentalist from Enna will be at the helm of the 69th edition of the prestigious event, taking over from the actor and theater director Tindaro Granata, at the helm of the festival for the last three years.
The presentation of the new artistic director was held in the council chamber of Palazzo dell’Aquila, in the presence of the mayor Gianluca Bonsignore, the director of the Archaeological Park of Tindari, Giuseppe Natoli, and the councilors Salvatore Sidoti (culture) and Daniele Greco (tourism ). The now former artistic director Tindaro Granata was connected remotelyto which the mayor recognized the merits of an “extraordinary” job, carried out on the basis of “mutual esteem and affection”.
“Today – Bonsignore said – we entrust Mario Incudine with a festival that has acquired a strong and well-defined identity.” Councilor Sidoti is on the same wavelength: «The management of Granata has left a clear mark on the event. We lived three wonderful years together with him. This passing of the baton does not represent a caesura, but a natural evolution of the path undertaken in 2022. With Mario we intend to take a further step forward, with the aim of projecting the Tindari Festival onto the national scene».
Tindaro Granata also spoke of «natural and correct evolution»: «It is a change of direction that we decided by mutual agreement. They have been three intense years, and I wish the Administration to continue this extraordinary cultural work. I am convinced that Mario Incudine, an artist I have appreciated for years, is the right name to expand the indisputable potential of the event.”
«If the Tindari Festival has returned to being central in the mapping of Italian festivals, it is thanks to my predecessor». This is how Mario Incudine began, speaking about Tindari as a brand to be exported well beyond regional borders: «We artists – he declared – live on perceptions. I immediately understood that this area has enormous potential. The city of Patti holds one of the oldest and most renowned Greek settlements. I know that the expectations of me are high and this energizes me even more. I have lots of ideas and I will make all my contacts available to the Festival.” The goal is to create an even more itinerant festival, from whose epicenter of Tindari many initiatives spread radially to be proposed in the hinterland municipalities, «in the name of a cultural pilgrimage that can spread beauty».
Fundamental, according to Incudine, will be the collaboration with the Archaeological Park of Tindari, whose leaders have guaranteed support with a view to an overall improvement of the cultural offer that a site of Tindari’s caliber is called upon to offer.