The 2009 edition of Ravenna Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary -- its first edition dates back to 1990 -- with a 'sacred' theme: prayer and ritual as the places of the soul, variously declined in the course of the centuries by their different interpretations in music and the arts. The meditative dimension of this year's theme will be disclosed in the holy atmosphere of Byzantine basilicas imbued with ancient Eastern spirituality. The important anniversaries of composers like Joseph Haydn and Georg Friedrich Händel will enrich the Festival's theme by re-proposing pages whose inspiration is either sacred or exquisitely mundane: respectively Die Schöpfung (The Creation) and Water Music / Music for the Royal Fireworks.

One of the scheduled events goes by the title "... there's a place... let us meet there... Praying voices", and will be dedicated to listening -- in the evangelic sense -- to the word of God: praying, ecstatic voices will gather round the compelling speech and thought of philosopher Massimo Cacciari, which enthral and capture like the desert wind.

The three-act opera Demofoonte, composed and represented by Niccolò Jommelli in Naples in 1770, will be conducted by Riccardo Muti within his ongoing project of reviving obscure or forgotten masterpieces from the Neapolitan School of the 18th century, indeed the cornerstone upon which later European operas rest. A third partner, Opéra de Paris, will join this year the original two -- Ravenna and Salzburg Whitsun Festivals -- in a project that has already inspired new life into Cimarosa's Il ritorno di Don Calandrino and Paisiello's Il matrimonio inaspettato. A further event of this year's Festival will be Paisiello's Missa Defunctorum, by its very nature connected to both the Festival's theme and Muti's Neapolitan School project.

The Festival's symphonic programme includes the traditional concert by the Orchestra of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, conducted by Riccardo Muti within the framework of the "Roads of Friendship" project, and two important dates linked to the Festival's 'sacred' theme: Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Paris Opera Orchestra will propose Offertorium, an important concert for violin and orchestra by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931), while Pierre Boulez will lead the Orchestre de Paris and its Choir in two 20th century masterpieces: Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Janácek's Glagolitic Mass.

The Festival's central theme will further be developed by two massive dance and musical theatre events: Rumi. In the Blink of the Eye by Robert Wilson and Kudsi Erguner, and Sutra with Shaolin Temple Buddhist Monks. Wilson's latest work (showcased here as an Italian premiere) is dedicated to the world's most famous sufi mystic poet, Mewlana Djalal-od-Din-Rumi (1207-1273). The performance, mainly based on music, singing and dancing, stems from Wilson's close collaboration with Turkish musician Kudsi Erguner.

The second event, Sutra, originates by the teamwork of Flemish/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui with Buddhist scholar Antony Gormley and Shaolin Temple monks. Larbi Cherkaoui's artistic corpus is entirely characterised by man's quest for the Divine in modern times, and perfectly fits into the Festival's thematic context. The same could be said of Greek-American vocalist and composer Diamanda Galas with her Maledictions and Prayers, centred on the sense of the Divine in the contradictions of contemporary reality (with a special reference to Italian poet Pier Paolo Pasolini).

One of the greatest and most interesting contemporary Italian choreographers, Virgilio Sieni, agreed to realize a new creation especially for Ravenna Festival, in collaboration with philosopher Giorgio Agamben: Oro (Gold) consists of four different pièces freely inspired by Books II, III, IV, V and VI from Lucretius's De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things): "Slender, A Discourse Upon Stars"; "Brin, The Cold Minds of Deer"; "Quiet, The Apparent Calm of Bodies" and "Thin, An Instant in Time". Oro pays homage to Byzantine and Eastern figurative culture, in particular to its representation of the human body and to its sense of space. Gold is a metaphor for the body.

Another Ravenna Festival production in the visual-musical field is the installation-exhibition Bianco Nero Piano Forte by Silvia Lelli and Roberto Masotti, two nationally and internationally renowned music photographers. They present here a fresh perspective on the piano as a musical symbol, and on its use-abuse in contemporary music.

What are things in the absence of man? Inert shapes, mere impressions in the rut of history, or throbbing figures of the imagery? What does a piano do without a pianist? Does it lie waiting, meditating, evoking, or does it simply exist? Does it feel nostalgia for man? Could this nostalgia for the absence of man be nothing but the piano's nostalgic feeling for its own self? Once it has been made the protagonist, the piano is no longer observed but observing -- implacable, black, shiny and tense.

This installation-exhibition walks hand in hand with four different piano events which will see on stage pianists like Stefano Battaglia (with his tribute to Pasolini), Fabrizio Ottaviucci (on the theme of the Indian raga as seen from the oblique perspective of such absolutely contemporary ears like Terry Riley's, Giacinto Scelsi's and Ottaviucci's himself), Daniele Lombardi (who pays homage to Futurism in music on the hundredth anniversary of the First Futurist Manifesto) and the surrealist keyboard acrobat Misha Mengelberg, a Dutch Ukrainian-born pianist, a historical figure on the European improvisation scene, who, since the '60s, has been carving out a niche for himself on the boundary between free jazz and contemporary music.

The Festival will also resume last year's project of investigating the relationship between still and moving images and music: three events will see the participation of some major Italian jazz musicians (pianists themselves, in a sort of prosecution of Bianco Nero Piano Forte): Giorgio Gaslini, with the score he wrote for one of Michelangelo Antonioni's masterpieces, La Notte (1961), and Danilo Rea with Rita Marcotulli, who will provide live musical accompaniment for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Danilo Rea will also perform in Canzoni nel cinema, accompanying an exceptional author and singer, Gino Paoli. They will take an exciting trip towards the rediscovery of the great songs of past and present cinema -- from the legendary Thirties, the golden era of American musical cinema, through the chansons accompanying French movies to finally celebrate Italian cinema in a very special tribute to Anna Magnani.

The Festival's dance section, besides the above-mentioned Sutra, includes an absolute novelty on the Italian scene: after his hugely successful Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne will return to the Festival with his latest work, Dorian Gray, which premiered at Edinburgh Festival in 2008. The performance is based on Oscar Wilde's undying novel, with its immortality-seeking protagonist and his narcissism, his obsession for eternal youth -- indeed a topical issue in our death-defying times, and with the themes of the double, vanity and the seduction of evil. On the background, another tribute to Antonioni, the great master, and to his Blow Up (1966).

Micha van Hoecke's Ensemble (a constant presence at the Festival ever since its beginning in 1990) will present a new creation inspired by Euripides' Bacchae (or Maenads, the "raving ones", the female followers of Dionysus, who, inspired into a state of ecstatic frenzy, took part in the god's orgiastic rites).

The dance section is further complemented by the performance of one of the greatest American contemporary dance companies, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, founded by Lou Conte in 1977 and presently led by choreographer Jim Vincent, and by a tribute to one of the protagonists of the 20th century, the capital Maja Plisetskaja, who will perform with some of the best étoiles of the international dance scene in a great gala. She will present Ave Maja, a creation Maurice Béjart especially dedicated to her.

Chamber music and ancient music still have a significant space within the Festival, and contribute to the valorisation of the artistic treasures the city of Ravenna so jealously guards: thus, here's Un Libro de Horas de Isabel La Católica (Isabella I of Castile's polyphonic prayers) as performed by the Coro Odhecaton directed by Paolo Da Col, along with one of the unequalled musical achievements of the Baroque age, the Rosenkranz Sonaten (Mystery Sonatas) by the great Bohemian composer and violinist Heinrich Ignaz Biber. And once again the Festival will host a performance by the widely appreciated Wiener Philharmoniker Soloists.

And then, Duel: pianist Paul Staïcu and cellist Laurent Cirade, two eccentric world-class musicians, armed with the most unlikely instruments, will confront each other in a raving series of comic performances alternating humour, poetry, burlesque gags and an incredible programme which includes Bach, Ennio Morricone and the Beatles. With no text or word, they transcend musical genres in an ingenious mix of classical music and humour, à la Laurel & Hardy.

And there's more: for several years now has the Festival been dedicating special attention to one of the 20th century's most popular and prolific forms of theatre, musicals. This year the stage of PalaFiera, Forlì, will host Mamma Mia!, the production of the moment, based on the perfect creations of Abba's songs and on the refined staging by one of the most promising theatre directors on the British scene, Phyllida Lloyd.

The closing event of the 20th edition of the Festival schedules the encounter of two fabulous pianists, Lang Lang -- former enfant prodige and now a first-rate star in the classical firmament, and Herbie Hancock -- a living legend of jazz, who will perform with the musicians of the Cherubini Youth Orchestra in a breath-taking sequence of solos, duets, and concerts for two pianos and orchestra. The two champions first "challenged" each other at the 50th Grammy Awards in a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (also included in the Ravenna programme). That's where the project was born of a closer collaboration, with a view to exploring musical boundaries and transcending all genre distinctions.

The Festival's programme will be complemented by the traditional and appreciated Sunday Liturgies, and by complimentary afternoon concerts by the soloists of the Cherubini Youth Orchestra, in residence at the Festival during summer months. (Besides the closing concert, the Orchestra will also be performing in some of the Festival's most important events, the already-mentioned Requiem by Paisiello and Jommelli's Demofoonte.).