Viale dei Canti project 2016

The Viale dei Canti (‘Avenue of the Chants’) took place at the Hotel de Galliffet in Rue de Grenelle in Paris, which since 1962 has been home to the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, thanks to the support of the Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte. It is made up of a graffito, designed by the artist Giuseppe Caccavale, and carried out by students of the Ensad (the national school of decorative arts), and a sound project by Stefano Gervasoni, created together with Alvise Vidolin of the University of Padua, and Marco Liuni of the Ircam.

On a wall 50 metres long, the verses are reproduced of the Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia (‘Nocturnal Chant of a Wandering Shepherd of Asia’) by Giacomo Leopardi, along with compositions by four twentieth-century poets: Alfonso Gatto, Bartolo Cattafi, Lorenzo Calogero and Leonardo Sinisgalli.

Through six loudspeakers embedded in the wall, we may hear the verses of the poems recited by mezzo-soprano Monica Bacelli accompanied by other sounds. All in all, an intervention that celebrates the fusion of the arts.