The evening proposed by the World Academy of Poetry at the Maffeiano Lapidary Museum in Verona was a great success with the public. The event of poetry, music and dance composed of the Catullo Prize and the recital “Ecology and the celebration of nature in the different poetic traditions of the world” saw the participation of many illustrious guests.
Ambassador Moez Sinaoui withdrew the Catullo 2022 Prize awarded, for the international section, to the Tunisian Minister for Family, Women, Children and the Elderly Amel Belhaj Moussa, in her role as a poetess – unable to participate due to institutional commitments . “This prestigious award is a beautiful recognition to a Tunisian poetess and to the Tunisian woman” said Sinaoui who read the message sent by Moussa in which she declared herself “very honored to receive this award, so coveted by every poet, and grateful to the Academy that has never ceased to value poetry while preserving its nobility, in a changing world, which moves further and further away from these spiritual values ”.
In the evening conducted by Simonetta Chesini, the national section of the Catullo 2022 Prize saw the awarding of Umberto Piersanti, poet, author and teacher, as well as president of the Giacomo Leopardi World Poetry Center in Recanati. And with a reference to Leopardi he commented on the receipt of the award “When I was little I wanted to be a poet known in the world and today, that I am a minimum, I am happy and at the same time I know that everything in the world passes and almost no footprints leaves”.
Also intense was the intervention of the writer and literary critic, as well as a member of the jury of the Catullo Prize, Piero Lagazzi who defined the evening as “a dream of a midsummer night in the ideal homeland of Shakespeare; one of those moments in which truth and illusion meet, the reality that in these years we have been living too hard is decanted in the dream, in poetry, in magic and the West and the East meet, the present and past. ” Of him the reading of some verses of the poet Attilio Bertolucci, with musical interlude entrusted to Roberto Corlianò on the piano and Sara Airoldi on the cello. The two musicians also accompanied the actors Letizia Bravi and Giorgio Castagna, engaged in the reading of both Italian and foreign poems, with choreographic improvisations curated by Luca Condello for the young dancers of Laboratorio Danza Verona.
Moments full of magic also for the performance of the thirteen year old Alexa Isobel Kaufman, the youngest soprano in the Philippines, who sang “Ombra mai fu” from Handel’s Serse, accompanied on the piano by Corlianò, with the choreography of Luca Condello, and for “What is Nature? Ask the Poets for it ”, which saw the poet and writer Davide Rondoni, winner of some of the major poetry prizes, on stage.
To conclude the evening the show produced by the World Academy of Poetry and inspired by the verses of “Poslednji Tango” by Majo Danilovic, with music composed by Matteo Salvemini and performed on the piano by Stefan Markovic and the voice of the baritone Andrea Cortese, with choreography by Condello for the Verona Dance Laboratory. The appointment is for next 21 March with the World Poetry Day.