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Teatro Regio celebrates Henze's 90th anniversary of birth bringing on stage for the first time in Turin the fairy tale Pollicino

A memorable Winterreise at the Chigiana International Festival, Siena. 

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, Antonio Pappano led the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Orchestra and Choir, together with first-class soloists, in an intense performance of the War Requiem.

Apart from the precious Quattro pezzi sacri, Verdi wrote very little sacred music until this Requiem, probably due to his agnosticism. When Alessandro Manzoni, one of the most important and admired Italian literary figures, died on the 22nd of May 1873, Verdi felt that something in the Italian cultural world had come to an end.

If you recognize how Maurizio Pollini walks onto the stage, you can probably gauge his mood – which this evening was particularly restless. I have always wondered why he reaches the piano so quickly and almost immediately begins to play. Invariably, he has a puzzled expression on his face, as if he were wondering what all these spectators are doing in the hall – I love this shyness.

The Coro de Manos Blancas (White Hands Choir) of Venezuela, one of the leading group of the Special Education Programme, was founded by Johnny Gómez in 1995 to include children and young adults with disabilities. The White Hands Choir is part of the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras and Choirs, known as “El Sistema”.

The Percussive Planet Ensemble was founded seven years ago, when the then 22-year-old Martin Grubinger first performed his Percussive Planet (twelve percussion pieces from around the world) at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn.

“Of all my works, the one that pleases me most is the Casa I’ve had built in Milan to accommodate old singers who have not been favoured by fortune or who did not possess the virtue of thrift in their youth”. This is how Verdi described the retirement home for elderly musicians he founded at the time of the composition of this opera Falstaff.