The former Italsider steel plant at Bagnoli — some 11 kilometers
west of downtown Naples, facing the isles of Ischia and Procida and the
deep-blue Golfo di Pozzuoli — is, in a way, a monument to the
deindustrialization of the late 20th century. The spot is thus well qualified to
host the climactic event of the Maggio dei Monumenti festival: the
much-embattled concert with Riccardo Muti and the Orchestra Filarmonica della
Scala featuring Pergolesi's dramatic Stabat Mater.
Muti's performance, scheduled for 6 May as part of the music series accompanying the San Gennaro Festival, was originally planned for the Santa Maria della Sanità, one of Naples' venerable churches. But archdiocesan authorities, angered by behavior of musicians and audience during Twelfth Night festivities, announced in January that the Maggio dei Monumenti was banned from all of the city's churches.
After weeks of discussion between Mayor Rosa Russo Jervolino (left)
and Archbishop Cardinal Michele Giordano (below right), all of the proposed solutions
to the impasse have failed. None of the proposed churches, nor the gilded Teatro
San Carlo, nor the stately Peers' Hall in the Angevin royal castle will open
their gates, so Muti and his crew will perform at the abandoned steel
plant — possibly in tails and yellow helmets — before an
attendance of several thousand. The costumes would be more a spectacular protest than
a response to actual safety concerns, since the sheds where high-quality steel was
once produced have been the venue for the Neapolis Rock Festival since
1996.
Major adjustments to the site's lighting and acoustics will be needed to prepare it
for classical music, and renovations are already under way at a prospective cost
of more than € 410,000 — too much for a single-night
event, but a reasonable investment if the hastily equipped auditorium
proves to be the first step in the long-awaited redevelopment of the
abandoned urban area. Mayor Jervolino and her staff, who have expressed a strong
committment to reviving the area (not the least of the burdens they inherited
from previous city governments) emphasize their expectations of the latter
outcome, and the native Neapolitan Muti is willing to lend his support to such a
project.
However, local artistic and intellectual circles, which often tend to take critical attitudes towards the politicians' grand plans for renewal of the perpetually distressed southern metropolis, have begun to voice their discontent. It's highly irrational, they argue, that while the whole community is called upon to pay for expensive maintenance and restoration of a host of historic churches, the use of those churches for public and educational purposes (such as visits, exhibitions and concerts) is increasingly subject to exacting, insufficiently justified, and even whimsical vetoes from the clerical authorities. A similar issue is the alleged misuse of the Auditorium RAI, a state-of-the-art public broadcasting facility which, since budget cuts forced the disbanding of the resident Orchestra Scarlatti, is mainly devoted to internal recording activities of RAI (the Italian state radio and television network) and is no longer a venue for public musical performances, as it was for decades.
Maestro Roberto De Simone, a musician, playwright,
director and scholar of Naples' folk and classical music traditions and a
more-or-less official consultant to several mayors over 25 years, is not pleased
with the outcome of the Church's policies: "This is one more Neapolitan
follia," he says. "Big musical events in Naples are nowadays
in the same condition as an earthquake survivor: they must seek out shelter
under tents and in hangars."
