SILENCE AND MUSIC BETWEEN THE GARDENS OF RAVELLO
The Ravello Festival is one of the oldest and most renowned festivals in Italy. The Festival as we know it today is the outcome of a number of previous initiatives, and Girolamo Bottiglieri and Paolo Caruso were the chief architects of the annual event that led to Ravello becoming the “City of Music”. The connection between Villa Rufolo, the delightful venue made impressively and welcoming by the Scottish philanthropist Francis Neville Reid, and Richard Wagner was too alluring to pass up the idea of holding concerts in a place consecrated by the visit of the composer himself.
.........
Something of this spirit remained in the air, and twenty years later Paolo Caruso conceived the bold idea of moving the musical performances from the main square straight to the splendid terrace of Villa Rufolo, on a stage built out over the sea.
.........
Year in year out music lovers quarrel over the legitimacy of open-air concerts, with their accompaniment of extraneous sounds and noises. Yet surely the ultimate effect of the spectacle of son et lumière is undeniable, for any imperfection for the ear is more than made up for by the spectacle that confronts the eye. As Gore Vidal put it so poetically, “often, when the orchestra plays Wagner, the full moon rises above the mountains in the east, their profile recalling a dragon’s head reclining gently on the beach, while the birds of Ravello, who after all these years are particularly musical birds, trill their counterpoint from high up in the dark pine trees”.
Font: www.ravellofestival.com
Visit our website and choose your favourite tour of the Amalfi Coast.