MITTELFEST
2001 The Salt Road
Cividale del Friuli 20-29 july 2001
Official web site:
www.regione.fvg.it/mittelfest
Ten years later.
Ten years ago the Theatre, Music, Puppet
and Dance Festival of Central European Countries,
immediately dubbed Mittelfest, was solemnly
opened - the first event to be organised
by the new Pentagonal (today called Central
European Initiative). It was attended by
three heads of state, ministers and other
local and international representatives.
That day has remained memorable for many
inhabitants of Cividale del Friuli, where
the event took place. Those were years of
epoch-making changes and great excitement
for the whole of Europe in every sector,
including theatre and music. Mitteleuropa,
that is Central European countries, had
found some degree of unity for the first
time since the end of the First World War.
Their cultural endeavours made since then
were suddenly brought into the spotlight
and showed all their great value. For many
"western" intellectuals those were and still
are very significant years. Then another
change took place. In the last decade some
of the countries belonging to Mitteleuropa
suddenly became the theatre of tragic and
bloody events. Our festival too was affected
by this unexpected resurgence of ancient
ghosts and old sorrows. Now even those seem
to have disappeared and the five nations
of that time have become seventeen. It is
true that this is partly due to the presence
of new members of the Central European Initiative
such as Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Romania,
but also to a new political order in the
whole area. Today companies and orchestras
arriving in Cividale del Friuli cross more
borders and undergo more controls, but the
feeling of belonging to a large and varied
community, which is not closed but open
to the opportunity of a continuous exchange,
has grown stronger. There is a close network
of exchanges and relations today in this
lively, multi-faceted area of the globe,
which is crossed not only by the three routes
of commercial communication to which we
have dedicated this triennium (the amber,
silk and salt roads). Today there are many
routes, secret and manifest, and they are
not less important than those of the past.
That collection of languages which echoed
unexpectedly ten years ago in Cividale,
filling roads, houses and offices in a cheerful
and benign Babel, today is enriched by new
notes and new faces. Our hope is that this
spirit of rediscovered solidarity of the
first festival may be re-established, and
the increasing fame of our small organisation
at national and international level may
facilitate our progress on the new and complex
routes which have replaced the ancient ones.
In an unplanned way, History has fully flowed
into our festival, whose spirit has been
connected with the lives of and events in
the participating countries from the very
start, bringing it to the attention of both
the Italian and European public. For this
reason we are convinced that the events
we have staged, among many difficulties,
will be remembered and will have a place
in the culture of our years, and we are
pleased to have accomplished this ten-year
journey.
Giorgio Pressburger
MITTELFEST 2001 The
Salt Road
Cividale del Friuli 20-29 july 2001
Innumerable
routes connected (and in some ways still partially
connect) salt production centres with towns
and markets. Land and water routes which contributed
to the European economic and cultural development,
from the most ancient times to the Middle
Ages and up until the Industrial Revolution
of the 19th century. Very famous land routes
such as the ancient Salaria road which, from
the coastline near the mouth of the Tiber
river, reached Rome and through the Apennines
reached Castrum Truentinum on the Adriatic
Sea, the Cistercian Pralatenweg which from
Hallein reached Lake Constance, the Monviso
tunnel, made to bring salt from Provence to
the Piedmontese people, the Goldene Steig,
the caravan route which joined Passau and
Bohemia, the mule paths which formed a very
dense network connecting the Istrian and Dalmatian
coasts to their hinterlands, the roads from
Luneburg to Central and Eastern Germany, from
Wieliczka, in Lesser Poland, to the Danube,
Vistula the and the Oder, from Venice to Veneto
and Lombardy, from Trieste to Slovenia and
Lower Austria.
Whole convoys of barges sailed on all the
European rivers, followed on the banks by
many men on horse-backs, equipped with ropes
to overcome shoals and rapids.
Even more numerous were the sea routes, from
the salt mines towards all the places on the
coastline. The Mediterranean was crossed by
thousands of vessels of all types and rigs
whose holds were overflowing with "white
gold" loaded in Cervia, Venice, Chioggia,
Trieste, Piran, Pag, Brindisi, Barletta, Corfù,
Cyprus, Crete, Kerson, Alexandria, Ra's al
Makhbaz, Trapani, Cagliari, Ibiza, Peccais,
Berre, Grosseto and Ostia.
This trade made the fortune of the seaport
cities, and made it possible to wield power
through taxes and monopolies, but were also
the only livelihood for salters, miners, farmers,
boatmen, traders, profiteers and smugglers.
A precious good for the palate, the conservation
of foods, physical well-being and pharmacological,
therapeutic, craft and industrial applications.
A universal symbol for alchemists, the superstitious
and the religious. It drove out demons and
witches, it was an aphrodisiac, it enhanced
virility, fostered fecundity, purified and
disinfected.
Was it damned? It blasted the soil, was the
sign of evil, sin and death.
Sodom and Gomorra. Venus was born from the
sea.
Was it blessed? "… neither shalt
thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy
God to be lacking from thy meat offering:
with all thine offerings thou shalt offer
salt " (Leviticus 2,13).
A covenant which also applied to blessed water,
holy oils and bread.
While
the routes to which the two previous Festivals
were dedicated went from the North Sea to
the Adriatic (the Amber Road), from our
lands to the Far East (the Silk Road), the
Salt Road takes us South, to the shores
of the Mediterranean, in the lands of Hyperion,
to meet the "children of the sun"
celebrated by Holderlin. A fascinating journey
to that "epiphany of undeterminedness",
a huge mosaic of peoples, religions, mythologies,
philosophy, art, poetry and music.
Only some tesseras and fragments of this
phantasmagoric and endless mosaic will be
presented, for an ideal route through the
many "roads of song" opening onto
the Mare Nostrum. We will also move away
from the coasts to sail up rivers and follow
the tracks leading us into the heart of
Mitteleuropa, towards the rock-salt mountains
of Salzburg and the region of Krakow.
Sybil songs, Crusader songs, music from
Classical Greece, organ music composed for
solemn ceremonies in the cathedral of Salzburg
and Krakow will echo in the 14th century
church of Saint Francis and the roads of
Cividale, as will the musical splendour
of Saint Mark's Basilica, boat songs, dances
and melodies form Naples. Then symbolic
salt, in the Christian musical rituals,
in the magical formulas of the Prague of
Rudolph II. Finally, a dutiful homage to
Bellini and Verdi on the two-hundredth anniversary
of the former's birth and one-hundredth
anniversary of the latter's death, with
paraphrases and transcriptions by Liszt,
Thalberg and Chopin
Carlo
de Incontrera
The theatre section of the festival, directed
by Mimma Gallina and Giorgio Pressburger,
will integrate the progress on the "Salt
Road" (a metaphor of the meeting between
Central and Eastern Europe and the culture
of the sea) with the evocations of the ten-year
experience.
The works commissioned, the co-productions
and hospitality in the field of the theatre,
literature and dance will regard and highlight
the whole Centrale and Eastern European
area.
The protagonists of the poetry section,
organised by Cesare Tomasetig, will include
Trieste, Gorizia, Dubrovnik, Sofia, Kishinev
(Ukraine), through the voices of Saba, Emili,
Cumpeta, Paljetak, Dimitrova and Bialik.
From the cities of memory to the cities
of oblivion through Manlio Brusatin's critical-poetic
works from the book Arte dell'oblio (The
Art of Oblivion).
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