The St Louis - Bologna Sister Cities proudly invites you to its 3rd Annual Italian Christmas Concert entitled Benedetta Orsi & Friends starring internationally acclaimed mezzosoprano and Bologna native, Benedetta Orsi Aquino, along with members of the St Louis Symphony Orchestra and the University of Missouri - St Louis Choir. The concert will take place on Sunday, November 28, 2021 at 7PM at Christ the King Catholic Church in St Louis.

The concert will also feature Gail Hintz, piano; Jim Henry, bass; Marta Simidtchieva, cello; Thomas and Tricia Jostlein, horn; Klaus and Max Jostlein, violin & cello; and the University of Missouri - St. Louis Choir under the direction of Jim Henry.

Tickets are $15 per person. Ages 10 and younger are free. Tickets are available on Eventbrite:
https://benedetta-orsi-and-friends.eventbrite.com

A word of gratitude goes to Msgr. Mike Turek, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of St Louis and Pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church for allowing us to use his beautiful church. 

Special thanks go to the following individuals and organizations for sponsoring this event: Arteco Global, World Trade Center - St Louis, Mr. Giorgio Bucci, Mrs. Kristine Galati, Mr. Vito Alu, Mr. Anthony Lancia, Sir Steven Gilroy, Mr. Jack Baumann, Guidester Travel, Mr. Kevin & Lori Rejent, and Cav. Franco & Nerina Giannotti.

​Italian mezzo-soprano Benedetta Orsi has been praised by Teresa Berganza as “perfect voice for belcanto.” She is one of the 2018 nominee for Outstanding Achievement in Opera by St. Louis Theater Circle for her Carmen, reviewed by Broadway Opera World: “Benedetta Orsi has a quite breathtakingly beautiful voice, full and rich, with such easily accessed resources of power. She gives us a simply perfect “Habanera".

Orsi is one of only a few contemporary mezzo-sopranos to have performed all three of Donizetti's Tudor Operas: Jane Seymour in Anna Bolena, Elisabetta in Maria Stuarda and Sara in Roberto Devereux with Royal Opera Theater in Manchester, UK. Recent performances also include Adalgisa in Norma with Winter Opera St. Louis, the title role of Carmen with Winter Opera St. Louis, Boulder Symphony Orchestra in Colorado, and Amore Opera in New York, Mamma Lucia in Cavalleria Rusticana with the New Jersey Festival Orchestra, Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera with the Miami Lyric Opera, and Maddalena in Rigoletto with Amore Opera in New York.

Her first album Christmas Around the World won the Silver Medal at the Global Music Awards in Los Angeles as Best Album and Best Female Vocalist. Her new album La Voix de l’amour, a collection of French operatic arias and art songs, was released last Winter for the international label Limen Music. Along with concert appearances at Carnegie Hall in NYC and throughout Italy, England, United States and Spain, Orsi’s performance credits include roles in Verdi's Rigoletto, Trovatore, Bellini's Norma, La Sonnambula, and Romeo and Juliet, Rossini's L’Italiana in Algeri and Il Turco in Italia and Massenet's Werther.

Benedetta is a first prize winner of the Barry Alexander International Voice Competition (IVC), First Prize and Star Performer Award in the American Protégé IVC; Third Prize Winner of the Roschel IVC, and Audience & Orchestra Award in the Boulder Music Institute IVC. In her homeland, she received the Audience Award and Special Prize of the Italian Music Federation during the 28th International Piero Boni International Singing Competition.

Orsi received her bachelor degree in Music and Voice from Modena’s Istituto Musicale Pareggiato Orazio Vecchi, pairing her studies with numerous master classes and stage workshops taught by opera luminaries such as Marilyn Horne, Luciana Serra, Teresa Berganza, and stage director Chuck Hudson. Later, she received her Master in Voice at the Regia Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna.

The Swiss-Italian film ATLAS by Niccolò Castelli will be featured at the 30th St. Louis International Film Festival from Nov 4 until Nov 21, 2021. The film is in Italian with English subtitles. 

Plot: "Telling a straightforward story in an intriguingly nonlinear fashion, ATLAS follows Allegra, a lively young woman with a passion for high-mountain climbing, as she attempts to recover from a devastating event. Allegra — played by Italian actress Matilda De Angelis, who recently co-starred with Nicole Kidman in the HBO miniseries “The Undoing” — travels to Morocco to climb in the Atlas Mountains, but her trip ends abruptly when a man explodes a bomb in a coffee shop and her three friends die in the attack. Months later, unable to overcome the trauma, she returns to her city, where an encounter with Arad, a young Muslim refugee, forces Allegra to confront her fears and altered perception of reality and to heal her profound interior wounds. Swiss-Italian director Niccolò Castelli sets himself the goal of expressing, through images, sophisticated and elegant, thanks to the photography of Pietro Zuercher, the horror of an experience from which no one comes out unscathed. From this perspective, the trauma experienced by Allegra becomes a metaphor for a collective and social fear that has infiltrated our privileged society, robbing us of a tranquility that we thought was eternal.”

FILM IN ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

To view the film, click HERE

La XXI Settimana della lingua italiana nel mondo si svolgerà dal 18 al 24 ottobre 2021 e avrà come tema DANTE, L'ITALIANO (DANTE, The Italian) in occasione del 700° anniversario della morte del Sommo Poeta.

La Comunità italiana di St Louis, insieme con il Club Italiano per piacere, St Louis Italian Language Program, e St Louis-Bologna Sister Cities, propone un ricco programma di eventi a tema dantesco.

Dal 18 al 24 ottobre sarà reso disponibile online il film muto “L’Inferno” di Francesco Bertolini, accompagnato da una sonorizzazione registrata dal vivo dal jazzista Marco Castelli. Il film, primo lungometraggio della storia cinematografica italiana, è stato a lungo disponibile solo in copie danneggiate, mutile o censurate. Dopo un lungo lavoro di restauro curato dalla Cineteca di Bologna è stato restituito alla sua prima edizione, alla corretta successione delle inquadrature, alla pienezza della sua luce e dei suoi colore. Alla proiezione seguirà un commento al film del prof. John P. Welle, massimo esperto di cinema muto negli Stati Uniti e Professore Emerito di italiano all’Università di Notre Dame.

Il 19 ottobre il professore dell’Università di Austi, Guy P. Raffa, illustrerà la sopravvivenza e la fama di Dante nella cultura contemporanea americana durante la lezione online “La fortuna americana di Dante: a lezione con Guy P. Raffa”.

Infine, dal 18 ottobre al 18 novembre saranno disponibili online: “Liszt & Dante: Una Fantasia quasi Sonata – Recital di Daniela Roma”, un video prodotto dall’Istituto Italiano di Cultura, e “Ombre”, tre video in cui i danzatori della compagnia di danza italiana “Artemis Danza” fondata e diretta da Monica Casadei, reinterpreta brani selezionati della Divina Commedia. La colonna sonora alterna musiche originali composte da Luca Vianini e brani di musica sacra di Giuseppe Verdi, intervallati dai versi più celebri di Dante.