1  Come è iniziato il Festival

The idea to create “music courses” in Urbania came from Giuseppe Cota, Secretary General of the Dante Alighieri Society. It was the evening of the official founding of the “Dante” (27 June 1986) and we were walking down the main street (Cota, my wife Anna and I)on our way to the town hall where the meeting was about to take place. At a certain moment, Cota stopped and looked around. He seemed intent, even inspired. He lowered his voice and said: “I think music courses would do well in Urbania.” In fact, Italian is the universal language of
music, not only for the musicality of the language itself but for the importance Italian music holds throughout the world. Cota’s words proved to be prophetic. We considered his idea and soon decided that these “music courses” should be courses for international opera students and singers interested in studying and perfecting their knowledge of Italian operatic repertoire. There is obviously a very strong connection between the Italian language and Italian operatic repertoire.
The people who helped us develop a specific and original programme of courses for international opera singers were Maestro Maurizio Spaccazzocchi from Urbania who taught at the “Rossini” Conservatory in Pesaro and Genia Las, (mezzo soprano) from Poland but resident in Italy for many years and a great friend of Anna’s.
The details were decided after a series of meetings in August 1986. Maestro Morganti, also a teacher from the conservatory in Pesaro, was nominated “coach” and artistic director. The programme was unique in its kind (in Italy and throughout the world) and was officially recognised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The first courses were held in the summer of 1987 and the following year the first group attended with the international programme “Oberlin in Italy”.
Since then the programme has grown continually, attended by an ever increasing number of individual students and groups.
With all this “raw material” it was easy to envisage organizing an opera festival: the “Centro Studi Italiani Opera Festival” for young voices and instrumentalists from all over the world. It was the end of May 2000, jubilee year and change of millemium, which seemed a happy and auspicious moment.

 

L'inizio del Festival

 

Carlo Amedeo Pasotto, founder of the CENTRO STUDI ITALIANI OPERA FESTIVAL, and Gian Carlo Menotti, founder of the SPOLETO FESTIVAL, 43rd year, in Spoleto, July 2000.

The Centro Studi Italiani Opera Festival began in June 2000, after the Centro Studi Italiani of Urbania had been organizing courses for international opera singers for 14 years. On 26 and 28 June, the Festival gave its first performances of "Amelia al Ballo", the opera composed by Gian Carlo Menotti when he was 20 years old and a student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. This was Menotti's first opera and, by pure coincidence, was the first opera performed by the Centro Studi Italiani Opera Festival for young singers and instrumentalists.

Gian Carlo Menotti, who emigrated to the USA as a young man, has achieved great success in America and throughout the world. We hope that all the young singers and instrumentalists from all over the world, including the students from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, who come to the Centro Studi Italiani Opera Festival to study, perform and make their debut in Italy, will be equally successful.

This is the message M° Menotti sent to us for the first performance of "Amelia al Ballo": "I am really sorry not to be able to be with you this evening, but unfortunately the preparations for the Spoleto festival mean that I simply cannot get away. I hope you will excuse me and I send my very best wishes to the singers, the orchestra, the chorus, the conductor and the stage director".

 

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2 Characteristics of the Festival
     
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