Concert on Lampedusa

Riccardo Muti gives concert on refugee island

The Italian star conductor Riccardo Muti (82)

(Bild: The Associated Press)

As part of his "Paths of Friendship" project, Riccardo Muti is planning a concert on the refugee island of Lampedusa next Tuesday. This concert marks the end of the Ravenna Festival, which takes place every year in July. 

On Lampedusa, Muti will conduct the choir of Siena Cathedral and the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

"Stabat Mater" by the Sicilian composer Giovanni Sollima will be performed. The verses of the work were written by Filippo Arriva in old Sicilian. Sollima explained: "Composing a Stabat Mater means dealing with the greatest pain a mother can experience - the grief for her dead son. A son who, like many migrants, has died in our sea."

Muti is celebrating the 28th anniversary of his concert series "Le Vie dell'Amicizia" ("Ways of Friendship"), which is held annually in a crisis-ridden location; the concert series, supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture, has made stops in cities such as Sarajevo, Beirut, Jerusalem, Moscow, Istanbul and Cairo in recent years. Last year, Muti conducted his peace concert in Jerash, Jordan, to pay tribute to the generosity of the Jordanian people, who have taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees over the past decade.

The 82-year-old emphasized: "Music has the ability to touch people's hearts deeply without the need for translation." He described the concerts in crisis areas as "bridges of brotherhood".

Before the performance on Lampedusa, Muti will conduct a concert on Sunday in Ravenna, the city where he lives with his family. In August, he will appear again with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival to perform Bruckner's 8th Symphony.