Venice Carnival 2007
Dates are: 9th – 20th Feb. 2007
It will be a popular, widely spread and amusing Carnival. It will be an event involving the whole town and its citizens, as well as hundreds of thousands of guests.
The show offered to such a variegated multitude will be direct, immediate and emotional. Music, ballet, theatre, circus and all the arts dear to people’s hearts, will be part of an event whose roots delve many centuries into the past.
In 2007 it will be the Tricentenary of our writer and playwright Carlo Goldoni, one of the most representative artists in our Venetian literary and theatrical tradition. And more than anyone else, he will represent the Carnival’s “folklore”, its popularity, its being “everybody’s event”, no one excluded
The leading thread of the coming Carnival took inspiration from an artcle in his memoirs. Goldoni and his company will travel virtually around the world to meet artists from every country.
It will be a mosaic of arts, a masquerade, made up of so many pieces, so many different, diversified, amusing themes.
The past edition experience has also been of service in programming this new event.
The most appealing shows in 2006? Undoubtedly the great Goran Bregovic and his splendid performance of the Taranta with an overwhelming “Pizzica” in St Mark’s Square.
Music in the world, to make the world dance.
St Mark’s Square will feature more music for dancing, pop, folk, with international artists like Afro Celt Sound System, Bollywood Brass Band, Roy Paci and Aretuska, as well as many others.
We shall also witness a battle, with no dead or casualties, the “Marching Bands Collision“. Latin-American bands will play on the go, bumping into Scottish bagpipe players, finishing with the extraordinary “Funk Off“, the most famous Italian marching band, back from Umbria Jazz and the celebrated Orvieto Musical New Year’s Eve.
In addition, a circus like a theatre with “Creatures” and the “Magic of Fire” directed by Chiarenza, and dozens of Commedia dell’Arte performances, on their typical small comedy stages, acting out centuries-old Venetian popular theatre.
A great event, “Venezia Suona” (Venice plays), will be a guest at Venice Carnival: dozens of musicians will perform around the streets in Cannaregio and not only, there will also be a concert by the Band of Venice, especially invented and created for our city by Gianantonio De Vincenzo and his friends from “Il Suono Improvviso”.
We shall see a grand show procession by the most important costume atelier in Venice, Atelier Nicolao: hundreds of extraordinary costumes, as part of a display that will transform a woman into a rosebud…
Carnival 2007 will not only be new artists, but also new dates and new rendez-vous.
Febuary 9 will be “Venice Day”. The town will welcome guests from the world, offering the best of its artistic expressions. The “Maries Fête“, now refreshed and updated, will play an important part, then a grand concert from our best 18th century music tradition, Pantalone and Harlequin to entertain the public, ending with the Band of Venice to close a truly Venetian day.
The next day, 10 February, for the first time, children will be absolute masters in St Mark’s Square. A great competition and procession for all elementary schools in Venice, stilts, clowns, fire-eaters. A kids’ only musical concert with “La mente di Tetsuya”, famed performers of cartoon soundtracks, ending with acrobats and the magic of “Creatures”.
On Sunday we shall see a yet secret new “Angel“, to start with a great week of entertainment, closing with grand firework music over St Mark’s waterfront. An exceptional godmother who will confer the awards for the great international masked competition, an extraordinary beauty from the East … the name cannot yet be revealed.
But Carnival will not only be St Mark’s Square. Children will find their “Enchanted Wood” in Campo San Polo, with lots of animation and games, only for the smallest, while youngsters may enjoy music in Campo Bella Vienna, with the best trend groups of the moment, and nightbirds will have the Marittima to live through the night, and maybe, a yet secret new location at Castello…
Cannaregio will host the music by Venezia Suona, while Castello will be alight with theatre shows and a new itinerant suggestion, winding through the streets…
Mestre and its small revolution, finally with a distinct, definite, metropolitan identity.
A great novelty: the date.
Mestre Carnival will start a week later, on Sunday 18 February, when the baton borne by Carlo Goldoni will arrive over the Canal Salso by gondola and give the go-ahead to the “Donkey’s Flight”, a fun parody of the Venetian Angel!
Shrove Tuesday will be celebrated together in Venice, closing on Sunday 25 February after three days of music and dancing in Piazza Ferretto.
The entire city, islands, peninsula, and mainland will be disguised and animated by thousands of masked faces, popular music, and dancing to experience together.
“Is Venice the Carnival ? No Sirs, pardon me : Carnival is Venice!”
