Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi 2018

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The Festival dei Due Mondi (The Festival of the Two Worlds), also known as the Spoleto Festival, is an international event of music, art and culture that takes place every year in Spoleto, since 1958. The 61th edition will be held between 29 June and 15 July 2018.

SHORT HISTORY

The founder of the festival is the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who established this event in the year 1958.

Gian Carlo Menotti chose Spoleto because of the historic center of the city, the presence of two theatres, Teatro Nuovo and Teatro Caio Melisso, and for the Piazza del Duomo, an open-air theatre, perfect for the event.

The first major event was the exhibition Sculpture in the city scheduled for the 1962 edition and curated by Giovanni Carandente. After the festival, some works were donated to the city, remaining in their original locations, including the Theodelapio by Alexander Calder (in front of the railway station).

From the mid-nineties until 2007, the artistic director was the adopted son of Gian Carlo Menotti, Francis Menotti. In autumn 2007, the minister of cultural heritage, Francesco Rutelli, called upon to find a solution for the internal friction of the management of the festival, and assigned Giorgio Ferrara the task of relaunching the event and appointed him artistic director.

The artists who took part in the festival belong to the field of prose, lyric, dance, music, cinema and painting. Of these, we can mention important names, such as the American playwright Tennessee Williams, the Italian director Luchino Visconti, the Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, the composer Nino Rota, the film director Roman Polanski, the American poet Ezra Pound, the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, the Spanish ballet dancer Joaquín Cortés and many many others.

From the venues where the events of the festival take place, we can mention the Teatro Nuovo Gian Carlo Menotti and the Teatro Caio Melisso for concerts and operas, the Roman Theater for the ballet shows, the Teatrino delle Sei for avant-garde performances, modern dance, exhibitions, installations, performances and concerts, the monumental complex of San Nicolò for conferences, shows and concerts, the Rocca Albornoziana for concerts and the famous Piazza del Duomo, the setting for the Dance Marathon, the Gala and the closing concerts.

FESTIVAL DEI DUE MONDI 2018
The festival usually takes place from the last Friday of June until the third following Sunday, which falls in the middle of July and ends with the traditional Concert in Piazza del Duomo. In 2018, the 61th edition will take place between 29 June and 15 July.

As soon as new information will appear, the article will be updated.