To celebrate one hundred years since the death of the greatest opera composer of all time, Giacomo Puccini, Abruzzo has staged a sacred music festival, a special event of prayer in music for universal peace within the Sacrum Festival – A prayer in music for universal peace. This is an international event started by the conductor of the Abruzzo Symphonic Institution, Jacopo Sipari of Pescasseroli, now in its ninth year. The event, aimed at disseminating sacred music in the most beautiful basilicas of Central Italy and carried out with the support of the Cardinal Bartolucci Foundation, the Municipality of Avezzano and the Abruzzo Region, was welcomed and promoted by the Royal Commission for Italy of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, which granted high patronage on the proposal of its Abruzzo and Molise Delegation.
The ninth celebration of the Sacrum Festival closed on Sunday 27 October 2024 in the enchanting basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli in Rome, after events on Friday 25 October in the Marsi cathedral of Avezzano and on Saturday 26 October in the church of San Silvestro in L’Aquila. In the concerts, directed by Maestro Jacopo Sipari of Pescasseroli, the Orchestra of the Abruzzo Symphonic Institution performed, with some young students of the “A. Casella” of L’Aquila, and with choristers of the International Opera Choir, prepared by Maestro Giovanni Mirabile.
Two extraordinary events from the world of sacred music were offered:
First, the Mass in honour of Santa Cecilia, among the most famous compositions of Maestro Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci, which featured the soprano Maria Tomassi in the solo part.
In addition, the monumental Mass “di Gloria” for soloists, choir and orchestra, composed by the young Giacomo Puccini in 1880 at the end of his period of studies in Lucca, which is the only sacred composition of the Tuscan master and was rediscovered only in the fifties of the last century, which saw the tenor Vincenzo Costanzo and the baritone Armando Likaj engaged in the solo part.
A special audience for the event on Sunday 27 October 2024, in the superb setting of the basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli in Rome, included His Eminence Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, Bailiff Grand Cross of Justice of the Constantinian Order, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, Cardinal Protodeacon, and Franco Biciocchi, respectively Honorary President and President of the Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci Foundation; Bruno Carioti, President of the Abruzzo Symphonic Institution; Luca Ciccimarra, General Director of the Sacrum Festival; Hon. Nazario Pagano, President of the First Constitutional Affairs Commission; Hon. Federico Mollicone, President of the Culture, Science and Education Commission; Sen. Michele Fina, Secretary of the Abruzzo Democratic Party; Roberto Santangelo, Councilor for Cultural Heritage and Activities of the Abruzzo Region; and Daniela Traldi, President of the Italian Opera Confederation.
Representing the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, in addition to Cardinal Mamberti, were Baron Emanuele Muzj di Fontecchio, Knight of Jure Sanguinis, of the Delegation of Abruzzo and Molise, and the Delegate for Rome and Vatican City, Prof. Giuseppe Schlitzer, Knight Grand Cross of Merit.
“This new edition of Sacrum – stated the General Director of the Festival, Luca Ciccimarra – we could define as a ‘meta tribute’, focusing on a splendid work by Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci, in honour of the patron saint of music Saint Cecilia, thus revealing a little-known aspect of Giacomo Puccini, in the year celebrating the centenary of his death and paying homage to all sacred music. But, in these dark times of war, Sacrum, through music, wants to be an invitation to rediscover the sense of the Sacred. A moment, a particular listening to penetrate this reality that seems to have long disappeared, hidden, sometimes friend and sometimes enemy, sometimes mysterium tremendum and sometimes mysterium fascinans, which humans can also experience in the ‘sacred’ rite of the concert, of the performance , of the place, which belongs to every art. Thus, this year the concert had its debut in Avezzano, then in L’Aquila as the inaugural event of the fiftieth season of the prestigious Abruzzo Symphonic Institution and here, today, in the usual setting of the basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, where ‘art in its mystery confuses the different beauties together,’ to make us rediscover that lost Sacrum, a prelude to a tenth anniversary of the Festival, which will be the pure essence of the Jubilee celebrations.”
