The Roads of Friendship: Ravenna-Beirut

The journey continued its course the following year by descending southwards, along the banks of the Mediterranean. On 26 July 1998 the “Roads of Friendship” touched Beirut to form a musical and spiritual twinning with Lebanon’s capital city that was destroyed and reborn a thousand times over, to quote the famous Lebanese poet Gibran Khalil Gibran. Hosted in Beirut’s Forum, the Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir of La Scala theatre conducted by Maestro Muti offered an evening in which Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi and Gioacchino Rossini’s most absorbing arias resounded like a call to restore peace and overcome divisions.