As part of the celebrations for the centenary of the death of the composer Giacomo Puccini, the exhibition 'Visse d'Arte' by the plastic artist Corrado Veneziano was inaugurated in Bogotá, a pictorial interpretation of some works by the musician born on 22 December 1858 in Lucca. "It is an exhibition that unites the visual with music, art, and opera, and we are very happy to be here, in this union between Italy and Colombia, in the year in which we also celebrate 160 years of diplomatic relations," said the Italian Ambassador in Bogotá, Giancarlo Maria Curcio, during the inauguration, in which he thanked the support for the initiative by the President of the Culture Commission of the Italian Parliament.
"If there is one area in which the cultural ties between Italy and Colombia have always been particularly strong, it is that of music," the Italian diplomat added, recalling that the music of the Colombian national anthem is the work of the Italian maestro Oreste Sindici.
The 23 works that make up the Puccini exhibition, between large and small format, are on display at the exclusive El Nogal Club in the Colombian capital.
"If Giacomo Puccini could see us, he would certainly be very happy because we managed to promote two dimensions of the artist's life, on the one hand the political and institutional one, and on the other the sentimental one," said Corrado Veneziano. The plastic artist, who is exhibiting his works in Latin America for the first time, emphasised that Puccini's musical pieces are not only modern and revolutionary, but there is also a strong female presence in them.
The Italian Cultural Institute of Bogotá, fundamental in the organisation of the exhibition, emphasised that "Visse d'Arte" is a "homage to the famous aria sung by Tosca in the famous 1900 opera of the same name, with which Veneziano starts a process of pictorial reinterpretation of the strong dramatic tensions that characterise both the scores and the stories of Puccini's operas."
The Italian artist's paintings recall excerpts from operas such as Turandot, Tosca, Manon, Madama Butterfly and La Bohème, as well as their scores. The exhibition, curated by Francesca Barbi Marinetti, Cinzia Guido and Sonia Martone, is "the only exhibition of a contemporary artist supported by the Committee for the Celebrations of the Puccini Centenary" and has previously been shown in Rome, L'Aquila, Brussels and Rabat.
Thanks to the support of the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute of Bogotá, Il Barbiere di Siviglia directed by Italian maestro Antonio Micenà will also be presented on 11 January.
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