On 22 February in Rome, in the Hemicycle hall of the Chamber of Deputies, where Italian lawmakers gather to legislate and vote on government proposals, the Odessa Opera Theatre Orchestra played Puccini arias and some Ukrainian pieces, to mark two years since the large-scale invasion of Russia. In the room full of spectators, many diplomats were also present.
The event entitled "Elegy for Peace" which caused a sensation in the Italian political-institutional panorama, was possible thanks to the Promoting Committee of the Puccini Celebrations, chaired by Maestro Alberto Veronesi, who invited the orchestra to Rome and sponsored the event. The Italian Embassy to Kyiv and the Italian Cultural Institute granted patronage. The Italian Honorary Consul in Odessa, Vladyslav Shtamburg, gave a contribution. The concert was broadcast live on the Italian national tv RAI3. The full video is online from the Chamber's website.
What Italian tv and newspapers don't know is that the Opera House orchestra, 45 musicians + 5 soloists, had travelled all night to reach Rome. “Unfortunately, the orchestra had a concert scheduled in Odessa, on the previous evening, and they could only leave after 10 pm by bus to get to Chisinau airport and catch the 6 am flight,” told us Enrico Copedé, an Italian impresario resident in Ukraine, who was among the organisers of the event with his music agency Opera Production CD. As a result, the orchestra members did not have time to rest and immediately went to Parliament for a rehearsal before the concert. But their professionalism and motivation given by the importance of the event prevailed over tiredness.
If many Italian spectators were surprised that a Ukrainian orchestra has opera music in its usual repertoire, and in particular Puccini, this was not a surprise for the Maestro Veronesi: “Giacomo Puccini in fact had a privileged relationship with Ukraine: the soprano Salomea Krusceniski, coming from Ukraine, brought his Madama Butterfly to success 120 years ago in the Theatre of Brescia.” For this reason, the Puccini Committee included the performance of the Odessa orchestra in the programme dedicated to the centenary of the composer's death.
After the concert, the conductor Igor Chernetskyi, who had his birthday on that very day, thanked all the Italian organisers: "thank you for the sympathy and affection of Italy that you made us Ukrainians feel with this invitation to play in such an important place, and thank you for giving my orchestra members two nights of peace in Rome without air raid alerts and bombings."
The orchestra's departure from Rome was very moving due to the poignant greetings of the relatives of some musicians displaced in various European countries and who came to Rome to hug their loved ones again for a few moments.
