Success in Tallinn for the ‘F.A. Bonporti’ Conservatory’s film concerts
The orchestral groups from the ‘F.A. Bonporti’ Conservatory in Trento and Riva del Garda returned from Estonia today. The first leg of their European tour, which featured film concerts as part of the SISS project, was met with acclaim and satisfaction from a large audience during two evenings hosted by the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. The tour was organised under the patronage of the Italian Embassy in Tallinn.
This special audiovisual production involved a vast network of national and international collaborators, with a focus on promoting Italian cultural heritage. Rare arthouse films from the early 20^(th) century — ranging from black-and-white silent films to art and ethnography documentaries — have been brought back to life alongside the original music, which has been reworked for orchestra and ensemble by contemporary composers (Vittorio Montalti, Emanuele Casale, Andrea Siano, Cosimo Colazzo and Paolo Orlandi) and students from the conservatoires of Naples and Trento, the Saint Louis College of Music in Rome, and the Academia Naţională de Muzică “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
The Bonporti Orchestra and Ensemble, conducted by Andrea Raffanini, performed two highly acclaimed film concerts, as documented in Tallinn by students from the IULM Free University of Languages and Communication in Milan, a partner of SISS, who travelled with the Trentino delegation. The next leg of the tour will take place in March and will reach Romania.
You can find out more about this production by visiting the YouTube channel of the Bonporti Conservatory, where some of the film concerts have been published.
(The images were created by Johan Spirolazzi and Vicio Mattias of IULM)
Commentary on the Tallinn trip by Prof. Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, general coordinator of the SISS project:
“The result of a project to conceive and source audiovisual material that began two years ago” explains Cifariello Ciardi. “The two film concerts by the Bonporti Orchestra and the Bonporti Ensemble, hosted by the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, saw the splendid Suur Hall filled beyond all expectations. The Italian Embassy was present with its own delegation and granted its patronage.
On Saturday 7 February, at the cine-concert ‘Italy in Film: Song, Opera and Novel in the Mirror of Cinema’, the Estonian audience particularly appreciated the orchestral adaptations of the Neapolitan repertoire, which were commissioned from Andrea Siano of the Lecce Conservatory. These adaptations were used for excerpts from the 1926 film ‘Napoli che canta’, directed by Roberto Leone Roberti (father of Sergio Leone). You can watch the video on the ‘Bonporti’ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The hall was also full on Sunday 8 February – Cifariello Ciardi continues – for the film concert presented by the Ensemble Bonporti, ‘Reshaping Soundtracks: Documentary Films of the 1950s and 1960s and Avant-Garde Italian Music’. Images of a forgotten Italy, now largely gone, were shown on screen, as told by the directors who made Italian documentary history: Luciano Emmer, Cecilia Mangini, Luigi Di Gianni and Michele Gandin. The original soundtracks, composed by Roman Vlad and Egisto Macchi, will be performed in the theatre and reinterpreted by contemporary composers Rares-Ionuț Ghimpu, Vittorio Montalti, Emanuele Casale, Rual Masu and Gabriele Pierro for instrumental ensemble, voices and electronics”.