GENOVA PER NOI – MUSICA, POESIA, STORIA E TERRITORIO (in collaboration with Istituto Italiano di Cultura Washington)
SUNDAY MAY 22, 2016 at the Friendship Heights Village Center
On Sunday, May 22nd, we held our last Social Meeting before the summer, in collaboration with Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Washington D.C. :
“GENOVA PER NOI – MUSICA, POESIA, STORIA E TERRITORIO” had The i-Talians performing songs of genoese songwriters De André, Conte, Fossati, Tenco and Prof. Francesco Ciabattoni (Georgetown University), author of the book “La citazione è sintomo d’amore”, commenting the songs, selecting and reading poetry, and providing English translations of the well known Italian songs and poems performed. Fabrizio De André, Italy’s most famous songwriter, immortalized Genoa in many of his songs. Nobel award winner Eugenio Montale also was born there, and his poetry sings of the beautiful landscape and the metaphysical breath that issues forth from Genoa, the neighboring region of Cinque Terre and the “Gulf of the poets,” that inspired Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Francesca Casazza provided pictures and an historical overview of her home town, its mysterious alleys and aristocratic palaces of Genoa’s sixteenth-century owned by wealthy merchants and bankers of that time, today Unesco World Heritage Site since 2006. Genoa, today an important industrial harbor, is the birthplace to Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Niccolò Paganini and contemporary Architect Renzo Piano. Stefania Amodeo, also from Genoa, read “Zena de neutte da-i monti”, a poem by E. Firpo in Genoese dialect. The Friendship Heights Village Center room was filled with more than 120 people enjoying the event very much.