The very rich billboard of the first edition of IEROFANIE “the soul of Sicily, the places of the Sacred” artistic direction of Claudio Collovà. A performing arts festival that will take place from 28 July to 26 August in two of the most beautiful archaeological parks in Sicily: the Naxos archaeological park and the Segesta park.
Born from an idea of Fulvia Toscano and Claudio Collovà himself, shared with the regional councilor for cultural heritage and Sicilian identity, Alberto Samonà, the Ierofanie Festival includes nine unmissable events for the public; Music, theater and poetry, in a language often made up of connections between different disciplines.
This and much more was presented on Friday 8 July at the press conference held at the Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park, where Gabriella Tigano, Director of the Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park, Alberto Samonà, Councilor for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian identity, Claudio, were present. Collovà Artistic Director of Ierofanie, Fulvia Toscano, Coordinator of the section Guarding the threshold for Hierophanies, and Francesco Panasci Director of production and organization.
Councilor Alberto Samonà declared: “Our Sicily, where the ancestral call of the Sacred is strongly felt, is enriched by the” Festival Ierofanie “, a new appointment with a universal breath that, I am sure will plant in Segesta and Giardini Naxos, small cosmoses within the universe of Sicily, a seed of infinity.This Festival, of which I appreciate the richness of each moment, linked by a subtle and robust red thread, I am sure it will be experienced and, then, crystallized as an expression of otherness , like an “Beyond” that reaches here. I want to close with Kierkegaard, according to which “life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”, and it is in this reflection that, for me, recalls the purpose of the newborn “Hierophanies Festival”, that various temporal dimensions in the same space, showing how much transcendent there is in our reality “.
The park director Gabriella Tigano then intervened: “It is with great emotion that the Naxos Park ideally opens the doors of the first Greek colony in Sicily to an exhibition that has the sacred and its manifestation as its theme. For this cultural project, so refined and original, we have identified the so-called Sanctuary area in the urban plan of ancient Naxos. A space, near the Santa Venera stream, which the colonists had chosen for the sacred rites in honor of the divinities. And that today with the performances of music, poetry, theater and dance relives in the dimension of beauty and art “.
To close the press conference the words of the artistic director of the exhibition, Claudio Collavà:
“Happy journey into the sacred, in its places and in the company of artists and scholars who I am sure will take you to an elsewhere of the soul, in that dimension of the divine that has always inhabited our island”.
The program
Inaugurating Hierophanies in Giardini Naxos, Roberto Latini, award-winning author, actor and director of the Italian theater, who on July 28 at 9.30 pm reads Mariangela Gualtieri in “The delicacy of little and nothing”, a poetic concert for solo voice in which the protagonist gives voice to some of the most intense compositions of the poet from Cesena.
On 29 July at 9.30 pm again in Giardini Naxos it will be the turn of “The Waste Land Suite”, exactly one hundred years after its publication in 1922, a due celebration will be dedicated to La terra desolata by Eliot that Claudio Collovà will present with the original music taken from his successful 2002 show, composed and played by the Waste Band of Giacco Pojero and Nino Vetri, with Giuseppe Rizzo as sound designer and live electronics, the latter composer with whom I share my happiest experiences in theater in recent years.
On July 30th at 9.30 pm in Giardini Naxos the music of Juri Camisasca, singer-songwriter who has built an extraordinary artistic path with very happy collaborations among the most important of Italian music, presents his concert “Mystical Meeting” whose music leads us to the piano of the invisible, in which one enters as in a meeting of souls, in a state open to the deepest spirituality.
On July 31st at 9.30 pm it is a great honor to have Anna Maria Hefele, one of the most important Siberian harmonic singing specialists, acclaimed all over the world for her vocal skills, in concert with Wolf Jansha at jew’s harp, better known by us as ‘wind chimes’. Of German origins, Hefele boasts important international collaborations, and her concert, an immersive journey into the most fascinating musical traditions, concludes the part of Ierofanie in Giardini Naxos.
The second part of our festival takes place in the wonderful archaeological park of Segesta, in a dimension of collaboration between the parks of Sicily. From the east we turn our gaze to the west and continue our investigation on 6 August at 22.00 at the Temple with Francesco Benozzo, one of the most original Celtic harp interpreters with a large and intense record production, philologist-linguist and creator of ethnophilology, which will propose his concert The stones of the dream.
On 7 August at 7.30 pm at the Ancient Theater of Segesta Roberto Latini returns to Segesta with his Song of Songs, one of the oldest texts of all literatures, in a personal and suggestive interpretation that has made this show a hymn to secular beauty , much appreciated and winner of numerous important prizes of the Italian theater.
On August 13 at 22.00 always at the Ancient Theater it will be the turn of Qlima, an electroacoustic performance for synthesizer, percussion and voice, written by Simona Norato, composer and multi-instrumentalist with several and important collaborations in Italian music, whose central theme is the solemnity of our past and the celebration of the mysteries of everyone’s life.
On 20 August at 22.00 at the Temple of Segesta, Miriam Palma presents her musical theater work The Guardian of the Ruins, the title of which alludes to the need to save the sacred and rituality in connection with the divine. Singer and actress, one of the most innovative researcher, Miriam Palma has created a very personal expressive language between poetry, theater and singing.
Finally on 27 August at 22.00 always at the Temple of Segesta, Giorgia Panasci, a well-known and appreciated harpist in Italy and who boasts numerous collaborations in orchestras on the national scene, and Giulia Perriera, on percussion, in their Manas concert, who it means impersonal supernatural force, an experimental project with a program between the sacred and the baroque and which proposes music and sound as a link between the Spiritual Man and the physical brain.
The Hierophanies program is enriched with a rich calendar of in-depth meetings on the theme of the Sacred, conducted by important personalities of the Italian scientific and cultural panorama and curated by Fulvia Toscano. Conversations with the public who, with happy intuition, entitled CustoDire la threshold. Meetings that will precede the shows of Giardini Naxos and that will allow a deep immersion in the concept of the sacred that is the basis of our conception. On the trail of Greek wisdom, with Angelo Tonelli and Davide Susanetti, Caro Hilmann with Riccardo Mondo and Luigi Turinese, The new alphabet of the sacred with Alessandro Dehò and Davide Brullo, and Metaphysics of ecology, the return of the ancient Gods with Andrea Scarabelli and Eduardo Zarelli. Finally, a seminar and a workshop in Segesta-Calatafimi conducted by Raffaele Schiavo, which will be possible to participate, as an experiential laboratory. Singer, musician, composer, music therapist, researcher, author and theatrical performer, he is an expert in ancient voice (from the Middle Ages to the Baroque), in Polyphony and Song of Harmonics, and the teaching method carried out in his workshop largely follows theoretical principles -practices of the socio-musical method VoxEchology, which he himself devised.