Florence. The Season at Villa La Pietra

The Season at Villa La Pietra, New York University Florence, is a summer celebration of creative collaboration conducted throughout the grounds of the 15th century Villa and its extraordinary and scenographic gardens. New York University convenes artists, writers, musicians, and public intellectuals, and provides them the time and space in which to hone their craft, collaborate across disciplines and produce new work or reinterpretations of classics. The resulting work is presented in a debut performance before an audience of Florentines and Americans, invited to the gardens of Villa La Pietra for a surprising and elegant evening. 

New York University Florence introduces the 12th edition of The Season at Villa La Pietra, a summer celebration of creative collaboration conducted throughout the grounds of the 15th century Villa and its extraordinary and scenographic gardens from June 5 through August 23, 2016. World-renowned actors, writers, musicians, and artists will gather to work collaboratively across disciplines and to present a range of professional performances including classical compositions and concerts,   theatre performances, the reading of new works and a film festival. 

EROS ΕΡΩΣ- June 5 – 5:00 PM, Limonaia, Villa La Pietra

Villa La Pietra’s The Season and Sacro/Profano series of Salon/Sanctuary Concertsopen with EROS ΕΡΩΣ, a performance that honors the inspiration of the Renaissance through a performance of ancient Greek Lyric poetry. Created and performed by Ensemble Melpomen.

Writers Reading and Dialogues - June 7 and June 13 – 6:30 PM, Caffè Letterario, Florence

Internationally celebrated novelists and poets read from their works at Caffè Letterario, Le Murate.

June 7: Readings by Mark Bibbins and Maaza Mengiste

June 13: Readings by Alexander Chee and Dorothea Lasky

The Writers’ Season – La Stagione degli Scrittori

June 16 and June 17 – 6:00 PM, Pomario, Villa La Pietra

Dialogues and readings with contemporary American and Italian writers, curated by Alessandro Raveggi, a writer and member of the NYU Florence faculty. Both dialogue sessions will be translated in Italian and English.

June 16: Dorothea Lasky meets Antonella Anedda (Poetry), moderated by Luca Baldoni

Alexander Chee meets Tommaso Pincio (Fiction), moderated by Raoul Bruni

June 17: Mark Bibbins meets Franco Buffoni (Poetry), moderated by Diego Bertelli

Maaza Mengiste meets Claudia Durastanti (Fiction), moderated by Vanni Santoni

The Essential Shakespeare - June 18 and June 19 - Villa La Pietra The Continuum Company celebrates its 10th anniversary of performances in The Season at Villa La Pietra and the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with six plays over two evenings. 

Each evening’s selections will be presented in 90 minutes, as each actor takes on the essentials of one of the Bard’s tales and plumbs the personal soul of the story.

June 18 – 8:00 PM, Limonaia:

Susan Watson performs Measure for Measure Cherise Boothe performs Othello Sofiya Akilova performs The Merchant of Venice

June 19 – 9:00 PM, The Pool:

Stephanie DiMaggio performs King Lear Dave Quay performs Richard III Carson Elrod performs Love's Labour's Lost

Long Take Florence Film Festival - June 22 – 7:30 PM, Limonaia, Villa La Pietra

Long Take Florence is the first festival for audiovisual works made with the ‘long take’ technique: a single, unbroken camera shot. The festival, which will include an international showcase of innovative short films and competition for the best film, is under the artistic direction of Domenico Cannalire, a member of the NYU Florence faculty, and filmmaker Graziano Staino. The jury will be headed by Italian writer and director Enrico Ghezzi. For more information, visit the event website at florencelongtake.com.

Morton Feldman’s “For Philip Guston” - June 26 – 7:00 PM, Limonaia, Villa La Pietra Villa La Pietra presents Morton Feldman’s musical composition “For Philip Guston.” Feldman’s experimental compositional style eschewed traditional harmonic structures, pioneering new systems of musical notation to create free-floating rhythms and intimate, slowly evolving sounds. Dedicated to Philip Guston, a New York painter and close friend of the musician, this piece exemplifies Feldman’s exploration of time and scale in his later works. 

The Miser’s Daughter  - June 27 – 9:00 PM, Teatrino, Villa La Pietra

NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Commedia dell’Arte students perform an adaptation of Molière’s The Miser, about a pair of matriarchs and patriarchs each lusting after the lovers of their own daughters. This is a battle between age and youth, love and money, with all the commedia characters thrown into the fray. A rollicking joy ride of song, dance, and buffoonery.

Stage Readings from “Woman Before a Glass” - June 29 – 7:00 PM, Palazzo Strozzi

Rebelling against her wealthy New York upbringing, indulging her uncanny eye for great art and artists, and becoming the enfant terrible of the modern art scene, Peggy Guggenheim lived a life almost too amazing to be believed. Drinking, name-dropping, art, men, and the men who make art – with humour, heartbreak, and grand hauteur, Anita Carey's reading of Woman Before a Glass by Laney Robertson offers the sensational and unforgettable story of a woman before her time.

Directed by Mark Wing-David. Produced in collaboration with Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi for the exhibition Kandinsky to Pollock: The Art of the Guggenheim Collections.

Sacred Sky, Sacred Earth: Florence - June 30 – 8:00 PM, Villa La Pietra and Garden

A Multimedia Performance of art, dance, drama, music, and meditation, illuminating the stunning vision that is La Pietra. Created in collaboration with NYU Tisch faculty, students, and alumni.

Fortuna Avversa / The Fourth Circle - July 1 – 1:00 PM, Palazzo Strozzi

NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Commedia dell’Arte students perform a musical procession of larger-than-life puppets exploring Dante’s Fourth Circle and the sin of Greed, as hoarders and wasters joust with huge bags of money and bankers descend to the regions below. “What god is richer than the god of death?” 

The Sir Harold Acton Anniversary Concerts: Pianist Kirill Gerstein and Tenor Toby Spence - August 22 and August 23 – 9:00 PM, Limonaia, Villa La Pietra

August 22 - An evening of music performed by world-renowned pianist Kirill Gerstein 

August 23 - An evening of music performed by tenor Toby Spence accompanied by pianist Kirill Gerstein

Reservations are required for all events at lapietra.reply@nyu.edu or by calling 055/5007212 http://lapietra.nyu.edu/project/the-season-2016/ 

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New York University, founded in 1831 by statesman Albert Gallatin, is one of the largest private universities in the United States with more than 40,000 students attending 18 schools and colleges at five major centers in Manhattan and in sites in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In 1994 NYU inherited La Pietra, on Via Bolognese, from the Acton family. The University committed to restoring and conserving its cultural and cosmopolitan spirit. The program Study Abroad Florence was born, and in a few years it became one of the largest programs present in Florence, accommodating up to 350 students per semester. NYU Florence offers a strong and aligned humanities curriculum of art history, history, cinema and literature, alongside a newly focused concentration in Social Research, Public Policy and Law.