space through the maquette
ROF 15K. fifteen thousand days

THE FREEDOM OF VISION IN ROSSINI'S VISUAL IMAGINATION

On August 28, 1980, the curtain of the Teatro Rossini rose for the first performance of La gazza ladra, the opening production of the very first edition of the Rossini Opera Festival. On Wednesday, September 22, 2021, exactly 15,000 days had passed since that date. The impact of the ROF on the city and its identification with it form a bond that has been renewed and reaffirmed daily for over forty years; the choice of the day as the unit of measure for calculating the Festival's age therefore seemed particularly fitting. Over forty years of history, the ROF experience has established the formula of “musicology plus theatre”: a laboratory of applied musicology, carried out side by side with scholars from the Fondazione Rossini, which has become a genuine collective journey of rediscovery of forgotten Rossinian masterpieces, undertaken together with an audience of enthusiasts. It all began with the exclusion of inauthentic material from the scores, a cornerstone of the battle for cultural integrity undertaken by the Fondazione Rossini together with the ROF and Casa Ricordi. The respective spheres of autonomy between musicological research and modern theatrical staging were then defined, summed up in the principle of the utmost respect for the authentic musical text combined with the utmost freedom in staging choices. This is precisely why the Festival's history can also be told through some of the most extraordinary productions that have brought its stages to life, given new life through the maquettes — once working tools, now masterpieces of craftsmanship — which will offer the viewer the wonder of hand-made knowledge and the creation of mind and soul that has characterised a long history of musical theatre in the city of Pesaro.