The Festival of Two Worlds’ Yearbooks #2

The reconnaissance of the “Festival of Two Worlds’ Yearbooks” preserved at the Carducci City Library continues, a series of publications to make a journey through time together with the protagonists and the shows of the Spoleto Festival.

Today we present the editions from 1963 to 1966, when the Festival was already in its prime.

1963 Yearbook

In the 1963 programme, Luchino Visconti’s direction of “La Traviata” stands out, with reproductions of figures by Piero Tosi and Bice Brighetto. Another formidable Visconti collaborator, Lila de Nobili, is represented in a sketch for the opera “La Madre” by Stanley Hollingworth, directed by Sandro Sequi. For the pages dedicated – as is customary in yearbooks – to the previous edition of the Festival, that of 1962, we have chosen both an intense portrait of Carla Fracci, the protagonist of the ballet at the Festival of Two Worlds, and some moments from the International Seminar for Actors directed by the founder of the Actors Studio Lee Strasberg and his wife Paula.

Bozzetto-di-Lila-De-Nobili

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1964 Yearbook

In 1964 Louis Malle, who had chosen Spoleto as the set for his ‘Private Life’ a few years earlier, was called upon by Menotti to stage the Hugo von Hofmannsthal play ‘The Knight of the Rose’ with music by Richard Strauss directed by Thomas Schippers. Other performances in the 1964 Festival programme included ballets by Paul Tylor and a rich musical programme including Rossini’s “Stabat Mater” and Ludwing Van Beeethoven’s “La Cantata per la Morte Dell’Imperatore Joseph II” which were performed in memoriam of Anna Venturini, director of the Festival from 1958 to 1963.

I-balletti-di-Paul-Taylor

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1965 Yearbook

In 1965 Thomas Schippers directed and conducted Verdi’s Otello. The costumes were designed by Tony Walton. For dance, George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet is on the bill. In addition to these not-to-be-missed events, the yearbook also includes a performance that was very well received the previous year: Rudolph Nureyev’s “Raymonda” with the Royal Ballet of London.

Rudolf-Nureyev

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1966 Yearbook

For 1966, as well as reproducing the cover of the yearbook, we favoured the words of the great English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley on Spoleto. That year there are Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande directed by Menotti, the National Ballet of Sierra Leone, Italo Svevo’s comedy “L’avventura di Maria” directed by Mario Maranzana, but no less than five pages are dedicated to an extraordinary experience that took place the year before: the Poetry Week. It was a seminal moment of enormous impact when 24 of the greatest personalities in world poetry, including Salvatore Quasimodo, Pablo Neruda, Rafael Alberti, Evgenij Evtushenko, Desmond O’Grady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ezra Pound and Ingeborg Bachmann, met in Spoleto to read their poems in public, in theatres and in the quiet medieval streets of the city.

Copertina-Annuario-1966

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