Destination Frankfurt: where novels, music and singing meet

Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi, and Giacomo Puccini are some of the best-known composers who, together with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte who contributed to the success of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, have helped popularise Italian lyric opera around the globe. This marriage of music, words and recitar cantando [acting through singing] was officially recognised as a unique phenomenon by UNESCO last December, which declared Italian opera singing to be part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The official consecration was celebrated on 7 June with an exceptional event at the Arena di Verona. Promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture and broadcast worldwide by RAI television, the event focused on opera, featuring an 160-person orchestra and 300 choral artists from Italian opera-symphonic foundations, led by special guest conductor Maestro Riccardo Muti. 

On this unique evening, the world’s largest open-air theatre hosted artists including Jonas Kaufmann, Juan Diego Flórez, Ludovic Tézier, Vittorio Grigolo, Luca Salsi, Eleonora Buratto, and Francesco Meli. The audience also enjoyed the dancing of Roberto Bolle and Nicoletta Manni, while Alberto Angela, Cristiana Capotondi and Luca Zingaretti took concertgoers on an enthralling ‘journey’ through opera, the artistic form that has made musical and Italian history.

While it will be words that come to the fore and give rise to meetings and discussions on the piazza – another emblem of Italian art and sociability – designed by architect Stefano Boeri within the Fair, great music will be the leitmotif of a series of accompanying events. The effect will be as if Italian theatre, the cradle and sounding board of opera, were in a dialogue with the architecture of the Italian Pavilion. The pairing of words and music, the flagship of our cultural roots, will accompany us on the journey to Frankfurt and the entire Fair, from concerts to opera, from Rossini to Puccini, Donizetti to Mascagni, Giuseppe Verdi to Luciano Berio, from Romantic to avant-garde music, and from Taranta and folk dancing to contemporary music with Il Volo. In short, great composers, beautiful music and fine singing will provide the ideal setting for enjoying the best in literature.

As noted on the UNESCO website, on the occasion of the proclamation of Italian opera singing as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: ‘The practice of opera singing in Italy was born in central Italy in the 17th century in conjunction with the evolution of the Italian language, then spread throughout the peninsula and later abroad thanks to the emigration of opera singers and theatre producers. The practice of opera singing has historically played a function of bringing groups in society together through the sharing of musical and literary skills, and the use of natural or traditionally delimited acoustic spaces. In these spaces, it is not necessary to use technological instruments to reproduce the voice, thanks to the power of opera singers’ voices’.

‘Social aggregation and the sharing of musical and literary skills and expertise’, as well as the evolution of a language capable of winning over foreign audiences are the guiding principles behind the participation of Italy Guest of Honour 2024 at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Our motto ‘Roots in the Future’ embraces literature and all the artistic expressions that characterise Italy. It creates a bridge that opens the way to a fruitful dialogue between tradition and innovation in the name of a culture that unites people and knowledge, cities and ways of thinking, and, as a result, between novels and songs. As the country where one third of the world’s opera productions take place, bringing the passion of Italian opera singing to Germany, as Italy Guest of Honour 2024 in Frankfurt, is particularly fitting.

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