Art&Culture
Sorrentino serves up a cinema
banquet at Cannes
23 maggio 2013 - 19:22
Paolo Sorrentino has a thing about food — appropriately enough, for the director of a sumptuous feast of a film, "The Great Beauty."
The Italian auteur's Cannes Film Festival entry is a journey through Rome in the company of observant but aimless writer Jep Gambardella (actor Toni Servillo). Sorrentino's camera takes viewers through the sacred, profane and teeming streets — ...(leggi tutto)
Italy ‘wise men’ urge
political, financial reforms
12 aprile 2013 - 18:59
Two task forces appointed by Italy's president to help break the country's political gridlock have proposed a host of government and financial reforms that have long been discussed but never taken up by Italy's squabbling politicians.
The 10 "wise men" presented their final reports Friday after a brief, two-week mandate to try to help end the impasse that has prevented the for...(leggi tutto)
La Scala criticizes Milan
daily music critic
05 febbraio 2013 - 18:28
La Scala opera house has taken the unusual step of censuring a music critic from the Milan daily Corriere della Sera known for his biting commentaries.
General Manager Stephane Lissner said in a letter published Sunday that his opera house "decided to distance" itself from Paolo Isotta because he had betrayed a critic's role "to think, to reflect," and instead had waged "per...(leggi tutto)
Italians seek return
of Salieri’s remains
29 gennaio 2013 - 19:21
Residents of a provincial city in northern Italy are seeking to reclaim the remains of its best-known son, composer Antonio Salieri.
Salieri left his birthplace of Legnago, south of Verona, as a teen in 1766 to pursue his musical ambitions in Vienna, where he mostly remained until his death in 1825. He was one of the Habsburg court's favorite composers, and is perhaps best r...(leggi tutto)
Colosseum cleaning yields old frescos
18 gennaio 2013 - 22:11
(NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press) A long-delayed restoration of the Colosseum's only intact internal passageway has yielded ancient traces of red, black, green and blue frescoes — as well as graffiti and drawings of phallic symbols — indicating that the arena where gladiators fought was far more colorful than previously thought.
Officials unveiled the discoveries Frida...(leggi tutto)
gala season première
Wagner wins over La Scala’s
ardent Verdi fans
08 dicembre 2012 - 10:19
Richard Wagner won over La Scala's ardent Verdi followers during the gala season premiere on Friday with a production of "Lohengrin" that packed surprises -- including the last-minute arrival of German soprano Annette Dasch in the role of Elsa after two singers fell ill with the flu.
Dasch, who has sung the role in the Bayreuth festival since 2010, got a call at her home in ...(leggi tutto)
La Scala inaugurates season with 'Lohengrin' Premier Mario Monti will be attending
La Scala inaugurates season
with ‘Lohengrin’
07 dicembre 2012 - 14:09
The famed La Scala opera house inaugurates its 2012-13 season Friday with the Teutonic classic "Lohengrin" as it launches dual bicentennial celebrations of its own Giuseppe Verdi and German icon Richard Wagner.
Daniel Barenboim, La Scala's music director and a Wagner aficionado, conducts the gala season opener, one of the premier events on the European cultural calendar.
...(leggi tutto)
a 4th century B.C. sphinx
Police save ancient Egyptian sculpture in Italy
07 dicembre 2012 - 09:12
An Egyptian granite sculpture of a sphinx that risked ending up on the black market for antiquities is destined instead for a Rome museum.
Italian Tax Police Maj. Massimo Rossi says the sphinx, perhaps as old as the 4th century B.C., was found on the outskirts of Rome last week. It was in a box hidden in a greenhouse near an ancient Etruscan necropolis.
Rossi said Thursda...(leggi tutto)
not only mafia
Sicily like you’ve
never seen it before
04 dicembre 2012 - 18:48
“Reimagining Sicily” is the project that aims to explore the island cultural and historic relevance. The idea comes from North Carolina, where Mark Spano Communications, Inc. has recently completed a five-minute video to help promote funding for a feature-length documentary.
According to Spano, Sicily is “the most invaded place on the planet” and the island’s story rivals bo...(leggi tutto)
bicentennial
La Scala: Verdi-Wagner polemics ‘ridiculous’
04 dicembre 2012 - 08:53
The dual bicentennial of the births of composers Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner is turning into a dueling bicentennial.
La Scala general manager Stephane Lissner on Monday dismissed as "ridiculous" criticism by the national media of the decision by the Milan opera house that was once Italian musical hero Verdi's musical home to open the celebratory season with "Lohengrin"...(leggi tutto)
Rome
Revised statue of John Paul II inaugurated
19 novembre 2012 - 11:43
The city of Rome unveiled a revamped statue of Pope John Paul II on Monday after the first one was pilloried by the public and the Vatican.
Artist Oliviero Rainaldi said he was pleased with the final product, saying it matched his original vision. He blamed workers for a botched assemblage the first time around.
When the larger-than-life statue was first unveiled in May 2...(leggi tutto)
the most promising of the younger generation
Tenor Saimir Pirgu continues
his rise in opera
09 ottobre 2012 - 16:50
The unlikely encounter between first-time opera director Woody Allen and a budding Albanian tenor began with about 20 minutes of near-silence at rehearsal.
"I barely spoke English, and he barely spoke — at first," jokes Saimir Pirgu.
Then, in 2008, he was an emerging tenor who had one of the biggest breaks of his young career as a principal in an Allen-directed comedic op...(leggi tutto)
Frida Kahlo, her real look,
on display in Mexico
04 ottobre 2012 - 07:45
The women on the cocktail circuit of the late 1930s were all curve-hugging dresses and gelled curls. Not Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo. She graced dinner parties and theaters from Paris to New York in ribbons, full skirts and loose peasant blouses embroidered with vividly colored flowers, and her uni-brow was a bold contrast to the pencil-line eyebrows of the time.
...(leggi tutto)
Art & Culture
Group claims Da Vinci painted
early Mona Lisa work
27 settembre 2012 - 08:02
A Zurich-based foundation says it will prove to the world Thursday that Leonardo Da Vinci painted an earlier version of the Mona Lisa — a claim doubted by at least one expert on the multifaceted Renaissance artist. The Mona Lisa Foundation, which has been working with the anonymous owners of the "Isleworth Mona Lisa," says that after 35 years of research, experts believe it pre...(leggi tutto)
Paris hosts statue of
head-butting Zidane
26 settembre 2012 - 15:50
The historic head-butt that marked the end of France great Zinedine Zidane's international football career is now more than just a memory.
A 5-meter-high bronze statue portraying Zidane aiming his shaven head at Italian opponent Marco Materazzi's torso has been erected in front of Paris' Centre Pompidou modern art museum.
Zidane lit up the field playing for Real Madrid an...(leggi tutto)
March 28 to Sept. 29
British Museum plans major
Pompeii show for 2013
20 settembre 2012 - 15:51
The British Museum plans to take visitors into the streets, salons and bedrooms of the ancient Roman world with a major exhibition about the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum announced Thursday.
The two cities beside the Bay of Naples were wiped out by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., but rich archaeological remains were left beneath the ash.
Italian authorities...(leggi tutto)
