World Travel Guide

City Guide  - Florence  - Culture
Culture

The biggest cultural event in Florence is the international Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, which welcomes top names from the music and ballet worlds from late April to the beginning of July. Visitors should keep an eye open for one-off recitations played in churches and piazzas around the city. Posters are pinned up outside the venue and tickets can be bought at the door. Agenzia Box Office, Via Luigi Alamanni (tel: (055) 210 804), sells most other tickets.

Music:
Florence can claim a couple of musical firsts. Not only was the first piano invented in the city by Bartolomeo Crostoferi, but the first ever opera, Daphne, was performed here in 1598 at the home of Jacopo Corsi. Unfortunately the score does not survive and Florence has not maintained its early influence on the operatic form. Today's opera season opens in October and is held chiefly at the Teatro Comunale, Corso Italia 16 (tel: (055) 211 158; web site: www.maggiofiorentino.com) on the banks of the Arno.

Chamber music can be heard most weekends at the Teatro della Pergola, Via della Pergola (tel: (055) 247 9651; web site: www.pergola.firenze.it), an ornate seventeenth-century theatre.

Theatre:
The Teatro della Pergola (see above) and the Teatro Verdi, Via Ghibellina 99 (tel: (055) 212320; web site: www.teatroverdifirenze.it), are the two chief venues for drama in Florence. Most performances are conducted in Italian so a good understanding of the language is vital. Performances are typically productions of classic Italian drama or foreign plays in translation, interspersed with the occasional contemporary production. Tickets are available at respective theatre box offices.

Dance:
The annual Florence Dance Festival was first conceived in 1990, but its future remains under threat due to lack of funding. The festival aims to bring some of the best names in contemporary and classical dance to Florence with an annual contest for emerging choreographers. Performances usually run for a month in July and are held in outdoor venues, such as Piazzale Michelangelo and the Teatro Romano in Fiesole.

Film:
Florence has been the setting for a number of films, most memorably Merchant Ivory's adaptation of E M Forster's Room With A View and more recently Fellini's Tea with Mussolini and Up At The Villa, starring Kristin Scott Thomas. Such is the demand for picturesque Tuscan locations that the region has recently set up its own film commission to capitalise on promotional opportunities. The cinema is heavily patronised in the city and, for those who speak Italian, there's a real treat in store at the Odeon (tel: (055) 214 068), a stunning Art Nouveau theatre in Piazza Strozzi. English speakers can take a trip to the Astro (no tel), Piazza San Simone, near Santa Croce, where films are shown in the original language daily, except Monday. Cinema tickets cost around L12,000.

Cultural events:
The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (15 April-3 July 2000) forms the crux of Florence's cultural calendar. Now in its 62nd year it is presided over by the festival's homegrown orchestra and dance company. The orchestra has achieved international recognition under the watchful eye of conductor Zubin Mehta - famous for his performances with the Three Tenors. Most of the performances are held at the Teatro Comunale - the central booking point for the festival - but some are held outdoors in cloisters, piazzas and Boboli Gardens. Tickets for standing room only can be purchased one hour before the performance begins for L15,000. Pre-booked tickets start at around L30,000.

Literary Notes

Writers, poets and bored aristocrats have poured into this city, eager to discover its mythical reputation. Romantics like Byron and Shelley were enraptured by the abundance of beauty, sighing almost as much over the picturesque peasants as they did over the architecture. As citizens of Florence, Dante and Machiavelli were less dewy-eyed. Dante called it a 'city of self-made men and fast-got gain' and consigned most of his contemporaries to hell in his masterwork, the Divine Comedy. Machiavelli, who like Dante was exiled from the city, is best known for his study of devious politics in The Prince, learnt first-hand in the service of the Medici. Boccaccio's Decameron, written soon after, added little to the city, except a reputation for bawdy humour. But it was the court painter Giorgio Vasari who really opened the door to life in Renaissance Florence, with his artistic biography, Lives of the Artists. Henry James' laconic insight came much later, drawing back the romantic conceit and presenting an altogether darker vision of Italy, while E M Forster's tale of knotted passions in A Room With A View has carried the city onto the silver screen.



Copyright © 2001 Columbus Publishing
    
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