Cantare amoris est — Muti and the Coro d'Italia in Ravenna

There is a phrase by Saint Augustine that the Ravenna Festival has chosen as the theme of this project: to sing lovers is, singing is proper to those who love. It's not a decorative motto. It is, in its Latin conciseness, a declaration of choral poetics that Riccardo Muti has made his own.

The June 1 and 2, 2026, to the Mauro De André Palace in Ravenna, the second edition of is held Singing lovers is —"second journey into chorality", reads the subtitle. In addition 3,500 choristers Coming from every region of Italy, professionals and amateurs, children's and adult voices, they gather under the guidance of the maestro in a masterclass that in effect takes on the nature of a civil act.

The repertoire

The program designs an almost liturgical path in the most secular sense of the term. It starts from’Ave Verum Corpus of Mozart, a motet conceived for a small ensemble and here entrusted to thousands of voices: Muti describes it as "a very profound prayer" whose meaning does not depend on the number of performers or on historically informed practices, but on the fidelity to a style that the notes already contain.

Follows Caste diva from the Norm of Bellini, test bed for that bound which the maestro considers inseparable from the nature of the Italian language and the melody that arises from it. The journey continues with the a cappella choir of the Requiem Mass of greens, in the section where the voices dialogue with the soprano, and ends with the Prologue from Mephistopheles of Arrigo Boito. From Mozart's "ethereal" transparency to Boito's "fervor and sacred fire": an arc that spans almost a century of Italian melodrama in a few dense titles. The soprano voice is entrusted to Maria Grazia Schiavo; at the piano Davide Cavalli.