Living in Pesaro, Italy’s Capital of Culture for the whole of 2024, is proving to be a significant experience. Not only because it has added to the agenda of a medium-sized Italian provincial city over a dozen events of international caliber – the next ones will be “The life” by Marina Abramovic, from 5 to 8 June, and “Twin Color”, the show by Murcof and Simon Geilfus, created in partnership with Ircam of the Center Pompidou in Paris, on 24 May -, but also because it managed to transfigure, in the eyes of the people of Pesaro themselves, the opinion of what Pesaro can do, be and attract. Let’s look at the facts. Thanks to the composer Gioachino Rossini, Pesaro with the Rossini Opera Festival is known to music lovers as it is appreciated for the International New Cinema Festival. The two events will be held, with special editions in homage to the year of the Capital, respectively from 7 to 23 August, in the new Scavolini Auditorium, the Rof, and from 14 to 22 June the Film Festival. For “The life”, the cinematographic experience with Abramovic as protagonist and author, ticket presales will become available from 10 May, while to listen to the artist and discuss publicly inside the Rossini Theater with director Todd Eckert, on the agenda is date to note is June 18th: tickets on presale from June 12th. Anyone who has already paid a visit to the city has noticed that the Rof Foundation has opened the curtain with various collateral initiatives at the big stage in August: anyone who has walked along Via Rossini may have come across the opera concerts, donated to the flaneur directly from the balcony of the birthplace of Il Cigno, as part of the “Playlist Rossini” review. Calm and chalk. The entire calendar, updated in detail, can be found both in the anthology “pesaro2024.it” and then in the specific sites of each individual initiative, such as rossinioperafestival.it. It is clear that for a UNESCO city of music, such as Pesaro, the initiatives include seven notes to act as the warp and weft of the cultural fabric of autumn too. The Hangartfest, the contemporary dance festival in October, attracts visitors throughout the province with workshops and dance parties as early as May 18th. “Kagami”, the innovative concert created by the composer Ryuchi Sakamoto in collaboration with Tin Drum, during the months of forced isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, will be another highlight of the Pesaro carnet: it is scheduled from August 29th to September 11th. Sakamoto, who passed away on March 28, 2023, left a legacy of yet another sensorial exploration whose immersive qualities are highlighted by experts. “Kagami – they explain in the Municipality – represents a new type of concert, which merges three-dimensional moving images with the real world to create a mixed reality presentation never experienced before. The audience is invited to wear devices that at the same time show the virtual Sakamoto who performs on the piano, while elements of dynamic dimensional art are synchronized with the music and the physical environment of the room with the lights and the presence of the audience allows to eliminate any barrier between work, audience and artist, creating an extraordinary union between traditional art and technological innovation”. Pesaro is also the city of the Sonosphere, a theater more unique than rare, for the three-dimensional experience of multimedia content, whose innovative value allows it to host top-level productions such as “Twin Color” and offers a range of proposals throughout the year . The offer from Capitale is vast and does not forget that Pesaro shares the San Bartolo regional natural park with Gabicce Mare – prolific of initiatives aimed at environmental education, including the next one, “We nature”, from 9 to 12 May -, it boasts noble residences, now spaces for teaching and art, such as Villa Caprile and Villa Imperiale; it includes a green heart of twenty-three hectares, in the centre, which is the Miralfiore Park. One of the events defined as magical by the spectators was held right here: the Dutch artist Roosegaarde freed the imagination of over 15 thousand people who, noses in the air, appreciated the flight of millions of soapy bubbles, which with the skilful tinkering of lights, gave life to Pasolini’s metaphor of fireflies. The story of nature filters into a thousand other initiatives: one out of many is in fact “Participatory Botany”. In short, it was January 20th when the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella inaugurated the year of Capital in Pesaro: since then, poets, writers, politicians and intellectuals have animated the Alusfera room in Piazza del Popolo with reflections and debates. Today this is transformed to the eye by the presence of a “traveling forest”: when the green framework is completed, there will in fact be one hundred plants that stand out all around the fountain, protagonists of the evocative awareness-raising on the various themes of ecological transition and sustainability.
