between innovation and tradition
27 June-8 October 2019
State Archives – Spoleto Section
Largo G. Ermini
SPOLETO
The exhibition Spoleto 1960, il terzo Festival dei Due Mondi (Spoleto 1960. The third Festival of Two Worlds), curated by the Spoleto Section of the State Archives and open until September 30, 2019, presents archival documents, posters and photographs of the time.
“At the beginning of the ’60s – wrote Giovanni Toscano and Sandro Morichelli – the Festival was already a consolidated reality. Of course there were some difficulties, especially economic ones, but there was a common desire to move forward. One evening, in the town council, the doors were ideally closed: we won’t leave here until we find the money for the Festival. Spoleto was becoming an important point of reference for Italian and international culture and we could not go back.”
The third Festival dei Due Mondi has been the longest in the event’s history (8 June – 10 July 1960), and the final concert in Piazza del Duomo was among those shows that for the first time RAI will decide to broadcast live, along with the opera “The Prince of Homburg” by Hans Werner Henze at the Teatro Nuovo. RAI also chose, for recorded television footage, the opening opera “La Bohème”, broadcast nationwide on June 9 at 21.05, and the “chamber concerts given at Caio Melisso”, also known as aperitif concerts and then “Concerti di Mezzogiorno”, considered the main innovation of that year. The city is committed with all its strength to improve its image and services and, in order to achieve the third edition of the Festival, the City Council of Spoleto unanimously decides a contribution of 2,000,000 lire. In the same way, the role of the local tourist promotion agency turns out to be decisive at that stage. Finally, people of Spoleto living in Rome decide to establish an association of “Amici di Spoleto” (Friends of the Festival), which will later be called “Amici di Spoleto” (Friends of Spoleto).
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Section State Archives of Spoleto – Largo G. Ermini – 06049 Spoleto (Pg) – tel. 0743. 43789 – e-mail: sass.aspg@gmail.com
Comune di Spoleto – Piazza del Comune, 1 – 06049 Spoleto (PG) – Office +39(0)743.218.249 – +39(0)743.218.276 – email: ufficio.stampa@comunespoleto.gov.it
