If Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities are depicted as experiences, memories and desires rather than places, the centenary of the writer’s birth offers Ravenna Festival a happy pretext to reflect on the dual nature of the city, emblem of the community and its crisis, and its ‘invisible’ dimension as a crossroads of cultures, ideas and narratives. Titles that explore the terrible face of civilisation are contrasted with a celebration of dialogue between cultures and music worlds, and a double opening, featuring respectively Laurie Anderson and Martha Argerich, flanked by Mischa Maisky, opens a constellation of extraordinary soloists, from Anne-Sophie Mutter to Leonidas Kavakos and Beatrice Rana; the latter plays Rachmaninov for an evening with ballet stars (the dance programme also includes the Italian premiere of WE, the EYES by Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten). In December, Riccardo Muti – already on the podium of his Cherubini Orchestra for The Roads of Friendship in Jerash and Pompei – conducts an opera triptych with Norma and Nabucco in semi-staged form and a Verdi gala.

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