I created a portrait of the poet Hiba Abu Nada for the Ravenna Festival 2025 catalogue. The drawing accompanies a powerful text by Marcello Lorrai and the exhibition “I Grant You Refuge”, curated by the Ravenna Festival of Cultures, featuring the work of six photographers from Gaza.
Ravenna Festival 2025 Catalogue
As every year, the Ravenna Festival catalogue arrives right on time, heralding the start of yet another long and fascinating journey through music, theatre, dance, and a wide range of artistic and performative languages that will animate the city and its surroundings in the coming months. Once again, the catalogue reflects the “polyphonic” nature of the Festival’s program, its thematic cores, and the reflections arising from artistic choices shaped by—and feeding into—the contemporary world, in a circular flow of ideas, exchanges, and thoughts that define the very essence of artistic creation.
“Donde hay música no puede haber cosa mala”—taken from Cervantes’ Don Quixote and chosen as the title of this 36th edition—sets the tone. The book opens with an intriguing, little-known painting by Ravenna artist Domenico Miserocchi (1862–1917), who portrayed Don Quixote astride his weary Rocinante, framed by a visual “summary” of his major adventures. Art historians Giorgio Costa and Adele Felletti Spadazzi offer historical context, positioning Miserocchi (nicknamed e’ Pasturì) between Ravenna and Florence, where he studied under Giovanni Fattori.
The chivalric theme continues in a Romagna-flavored vein through the work of scholar and linguist Giuseppe Bellosi, who introduces readers to the earliest known example of dialect poetry from the region: Pulon matt, an anonymous early-17th-century poem from Cesena, influenced by Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.
The “Don Quixote section” closes with an insightful essay by Pietro Citati on the character of the 17th-century hidalgo—this year featured in a Festival stage production for the third time. Citati’s text leads into a broader reflection on Ravenna’s local theatre scene and its longstanding collaborations with the Festival. Franco Masotti’s introduction is followed by contributions from Marco Sciotto (Teatro delle Albe), Rodolfo Sacchettini (Fanny & Alexander), and Alessandro Toppi (Elena Bucci), three theatre scholars offering a first mapping of Ravenna’s theatrical landscape.
The photographic insert brings us squarely into the present, confronting us with the tragic daily reality of a people. I Grant You Refuge is the title of a moving exhibition curated by Paolo Patruno and currently on view in Ravenna. It features work by six Palestinian photographers—Shadi Al-Tabatibi, Mahdy Zourob, Mohammed Hajjar, Saeed Mohammed Jaras, Omar Naaman Ashtawi, and Jehad Al-Sharafi—who document the trauma endured by the Palestinian people over the past two years. Their powerful, unsettling images challenge our indifference and urge us to break the silence.
Accompanying the exhibition is a thoughtful essay by Marcello Lorrai, journalist for Radio Popolare, former programming director and contributor to il manifesto and Swiss Radio. His piece, The Song of a People, traces a century of Palestinian music, also highlighting the artists featured in concerts co-produced with the Festival delle Culture.
The second part of the book continues exploring key Festival themes—especially its longstanding “Vocation to the Sacred” and its rich focus on sacred and liturgical music—through an essay by musicologist Marino Angelocola, who introduces several important anniversaries.
These include the 500th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the foremost composer of Catholic Church music, discussed in a compelling essay by Marco Della Sciucca, a leading expert on Palestrina.
Also celebrated are the centennials of Luciano Berio and Pierre Boulez, both of whom were past guests at Ravenna Festival. Their voices reappear here through two of their writings—Del gesto e di Piazza Carità by Berio and Questions of Generations by Boulez—which recall a shared experience in Naples as they searched for Piazza Carità.
Another tribute is paid to the recently departed Roberto De Simone, one of Italy’s most influential yet often underrecognized figures in music and theatre. A heartfelt remembrance by Riccardo Muti, with whom De Simone frequently collaborated, recalls joint productions including Mozart-Da Ponte operas at Ravenna Festival, conducted by Muti and staged by De Simone with the Wiener Philharmoniker.
The final section includes essays linked to various Festival productions:
– Giordano Montecchi delves into the adventurous compositional world of Heiner Goebbels, creator of Surrogate Cities.
– Helmut Failoni (Corriere della Sera) profiles Uri Caine, featured at the Festival with The Passion of Octavius Catto.
– Alessandro Carrera, Italy’s foremost Dylan scholar, revisits the mythic Bob Dylan Manchester concert of May 1966, the same one reinterpreted by Cat Power on the Ravenna stage.
Also featured is Pierfrancesco Pacoda, music critic and essayist specializing in youth cultures and music, who takes us to the secret Naples of the 1970s–80s, uncovering a lesser-known yet fertile musical scene that laid the groundwork for artists like Pino Daniele.
The volume closes with historian Sauro Mattarelli recounting the life of Anita Garibaldi, the central figure in a new opera by Gilberto Cappelli.
Purchase Information
The catalogue is available for €30 at:
– Teatro Alighieri Ticket Office
– Performance venues
– Libreria Dante di Longo
– Bookshops at Basilica Sant’Apollinare in Classe, Mausoleum of Theodoric, National Museum, Dante’s House, Classis Museum, and Domus of the Stone Carpets.
Colophon
Editorial Direction: Franco Masotti
Project Coordination: Giovanni Trabalza
Editing: Susanna Venturi, Cristina Ghirardini
Layout: Grazia Foschini
Cover printed on Diva Art Duo 300 gsm coated paper, FSC® Mix Credit
Interior printed on Garda Matt Ultra 130 gsm coated paper, FSC® Mix Credit
Printed by Grafiche Morandi, Fusignano
Special thanks to:
– Silvia Masi and Daniela Poggiali (Biblioteca Classense)
– Paolo Patruno (curator of I Grant You Refuge)
– Giorgio Costa and Adele Felletti Spadazzi (Domenico Miserocchi paintings)
– La Cassa di Ravenna S.p.A.
– Gianluca Costantini (portrait of Hiba Abu Nada)
