Ravello Festival Ravello

The current Ravello Festival derives from a series of previous initiatives which make it the oldest of the Italian festivals after the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Girolamo Bottiglieri and Paolo Caruso are to be attributed with the idea of the cultural event which, more than any other thing, has contribute towards building the identity of Ravello as a "Città della musica".

The association of Wagner's name with Villa Rufolo, a place made splendid and welcoming by the Scottish philanthropist Francis Neville Reid, was too tempting not to suggest the idea of holding concerts at this site, blessed, besides, by the great composer in person. Thus, in the 1930s the orchestra of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples played a couple of times, with a programme connected to Wagner. The Princes of Piedmont were present at one of those concerts and Ravello returned the honour of their visit by dedicating the belvedere which now separates Hotel Sasso from Hotel Palumbo to the Princess, (which, today, various concerts transform into a miniatue Villa Rufolo).

But the idea remained in the air and Paolo Caruso reproposed it some twenty years later, adding the audacious logistic solution of a stand suspended above the void. The initiative took form thanks to the commitment of the Provincial Board of Tourism, then under the direction of Girolamo Bottiglieri and in the summer of 1953, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the death of Wagner, the "Wagnerian concert in the gardens of Klingsor" (as the cover of the programme notes stated) started with two evenings given over to the Orchestra of the San Carlo Theatre, conducted by Hermann Scherchen and William Steinberg. Naturally the programme was entirely dedicated to German music.

Starting from the mid-1970s the Festival has used the artistic consultation of Roman Vlad, who has given the review a note of original quality. For years Wagner has remained the tutelary deity of the festival and the key symphonic event of every edition is still devoutly set aside for his music.