The Roads of Friendship: Ravenna-Trieste

“The Roads of Friendship” don’t have to lead that far. In 2010 they stopped in Trieste, facing the Adriatic Sea, for a concert celebrating the possible reconciliation of three bordering countries — Slovenia, Croatia and Italy — that have seen tense relations and suffering in recent years. In compliance with the Festival’s theme, ‘Ex tenebris ad lucem’, on July 13th Riccardo Muti raised his baton in Trieste’s Unity Square, before a crowd of 10,000, and conducted 360 young musicians and choir singers in Cherubini’s extraordinary ‘Requiem in C-minor’. As Muti himself commented after the concert, “The Requiem that, in 1816, dissolved into music the tragedy and mourning for the execution of the French King, soared from the heart of the city to bring peace and rest to all the dead, to all who suffered, to those who had to endure fratricide, tragedy and loss”. The meeting of the Presidents of Italy (Giorgio Napolitano), Croatia (Ivo Josipovic’) and Slovenia (Danilo Türk), invited by Riccardo Muti to attend the concert, caused great emotion. Muti addressed them with these words: “I hope you will carry on with what we did tonight with these youth, but still with youth”. The concert was also made extraordinary by the presence and collaboration of three choirs coming from the nations involved, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, supported by the Cherubini and Italian Youth Orchestras, and by the Academies of Music of the Universities of Ljubljana and Zagreb.