This year, to introduce and enrich the Festival, the organisers are planning an exhibition entitled The Marvellous World of Melodrama, to be held on the church premises. It will illustrate the story of Melodrama [in the original sense of 'speech with music'] from its beginnings up to the experiments of today.

The exhibition will be curated and mounted by the well-known director from Perugia, Antonello Medau Diaz, assisted by Michico Taguchi and Gabriella Damiani Calzuola. It arose as a small scale version of the similar 1997 Tokyo exhibition, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the opera. The aim is to bring to public attention the remarkable phenomenon of the spread of Melodrama to every corner of Europe, through the hard work and expertise of Italian artists and craftsmen.

This presentation is also an invitation to explore the themes which over four centuries have transformed a new and original performance, called recitar cantando [acting while singing] into a phenomenon of world-wide proportions.

The exhibition opens with the extravagant intermedi [music between acts of a play] of 16th century Medici Florence, culminating in the intermedi of the play Pellegrina by Girolamo Bargagli of Siena, staged for the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinand 1st and Christine of Lorraine. Finally it brings us up to the present.

The exhibition, consisting mainly of photographs, will be displayed in three rooms with some original documents, together with properties, costumes, equipment, models and video clips.

First room:

From the origins to the Baroque 1597-1750

  • birth and origins
  • the Monteverdi reform
  • the spread of Melodrama through Europe

From the Calzabigi/Gluck reform to Mozart & Rossini

  • bel canto and baroque opera
  • from the Calzabigi/Gluck reform to Mozart & Rossini
  • Opera buffa (comic opera).

Second Room:

The Golden Age of Melodrama Part One

  • Opera in Italy
  • Opera in Germany
  • Opera in France

The Golden Age of Melodrama part Two

  • the Verdi phenomenon
  • the Wagnerian reform

Third Room:

Late 19th century, 20th century

  • spread of opera music in France
  • Opera in Russia
  • Opera in Italy to the end of 20th century
  • Verismo – realism.

New 20th century musical currents

  • Expressionism
  • The avant-garde.