Bonds that cannot be broken

While Americans were celebrating for Fourth of July, Riccardo Muti was leading the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra and musicians from the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra and Armenian State Chamber Choir in a symbolic concert in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia.

This performance was one of the two of the Ravenna Festival’s annual Roads of Friendship concerts, a project that Muti began with the Festival in 1997 to bring the healing power of music to areas of historic importance afflicted by hardships and political unrest. The July 1 concert in the town of Lugo just outside the city of Ravenna and July 4 concert in Yerevan represented a bond across the Adriatic between Armenia and Italy that dates back to Roman and Byzantine times.

For 24 years, Muti, the CSO’s Zell Music Director, has conducted Roads of Friendship concerts in locations such as Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul, Sarajevo and Tehran. Last year’s concerts took place in Ravenna and at the Archaeological Park of Paestum in southern Italy twinned with the site of Palmyra in Syria, in honor of victims of Syria’s ongoing civil war. A statement from the Ravenna Festival read, “The Friendship concerts want to turn to the future, a gesture of solemn joy and of hope. That hope, now more necessary than ever, finds its full expression in sacred music, beyond any creed or doctrine.”

This year’s concerts marked a meaningful return to Yerevan where the Roads of Friendship project first arrived 20 years ago, in 2001, for an all-Verdi program conducted by Muti as part of the celebrations for the 1700th anniversary of the proclamation of Christianity as the religion of the Armenian state, the first in history to adopt the faith. “Today, 20 years after that concert, we are back in the hard, ancient land between the West and the East,” said Muti. "We build another bridge of brotherhood, a sign of hope, as we still believe that music overcomes misunderstandings and differences of culture, language and religion.”

To emphasize the bond and appreciation for the return of the Roads of Friendship project in 2021, Armenian President Arment Sarkissian awarded Riccardo Muti and Cristina Mazzavillani Muti, founder and director of the Ravenna Festival, a special honor in the name of friendship. The Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia, Vahram Dumanyan, bestowed “the prize for their contribution to cultural cooperation between Armenia and Italy in a ceremony during their stay” (El País).

Following the July 1 concert in Italy, Lugo’s Mayor Davide Ranalli couldn’t have been more pleased with the 2021 concerts, which he referred to not only as a “symbol of brotherhood and sharing” but also an important indicator that the city’s important historic site, the Lugo Pavilion, can return to being a location for robust cultural life: “everything has been overcome by the beautiful feelings and emotions of yesterday[’s concert.]” Attended by over a thousand guests, the concert was an important symbol of a reawakening for the city.

A highlight of the Yerevan concert was a new work by Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian that was specially commissioned to honor of the 700th anniversary of the death of the poet Dante Alighieri, who lived and is entombed in Ravenna. (It is one of three works commissioned by the Ravenna Festival to celebrate the Dante anniversary.) "I have always kept an Armenian translation of the Divine Comedy on my desk," said Tigran Mansurian, who referenced the second part of the Divine Comedy for his piece titled Purgatorio. “So I was happy to be asked to create a new composition on the Commedia but I also felt great responsibility with respect to Dante and Maestro Muti.” Mansurian added before the performance in an interview with ANSA’s Elisabetta Stefanelli, “I am convinced that this concert, together with the Roads of Friendship concert of 20 years ago, will go down as one of the most meaningful and memorable events of the cultural life of Armenia of the last few decades.” Muti himself described Mansurian’s score in an interview with Emilia Costantini of Corriere della Sera as “something metaphysical, a sublimation that opens up to the mystery.”

Both performances featured a poignant selection of sacred works for orchestra and chorus, including Haydn’s Te Deum in C Major, Mozart’s Kyrie in D Minor and Schubert’s Mass No. 2 in G Major. Uniting all of these sacred works on the program, as well as the Mansurian, were the themes of spirituality, hope and salvation. “Each note is a miracle of the universe, a gift from God.” The concert in Ravenna also included a performance of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8.

Soloists for this performance represented both countries, including the Armenian soprano Nina Minasyan, Italian tenor Giovanni Sala and Armenian baritone Gurge Baveyan. The organist was Italian Davide Cavalli and the choir was prepared by Robert Mlkeyan, founder of the Armenian State Chamber Choir.

As Muti said in his remarks at the Yerevan concert, the arts allow us to not only to “find ourselves and find each other in beauty” but also to “find again the warmth of an embrace and peace."