Last Thursday, 23rd April, we held in Amsterdam a charity evening for the victims of the earthquake in Abruzzo. The University of Amsterdam (UvA) participated in this event in order to collect funds to help the academic life in L'Aquila to start again.
We could use their beautiful Aula Magna, located in the Old Lutheran Church in the centre of Amsterdam, and the president of the University, dr. Karel van der Toorn, held a short speech (starting in an excellent Italian) and one minute silence for the victims.
The first part of the evening was called: A trip to Abruzzo, a short show with literary readings, opened by singer Carla Regina who sang three pieces that talked to everybody's hearth, under the projection of the moon's picture you see above, made by Antonio di Maggio.
Dancer Margherita Bencini followed with an improvisation on the theme of the earthquake, accompanied by the pictures Dario van Houwelingen took in Abruzzo on Easter's day.
Followed a piece I wrote especially for this evening in Dutch (parts of it you read already here and in my Italian blog Mammamsterdam, with a musical intermezzo of Luciano Maio.
Willem Kroonberg ended this trip with three poems of Gabriele D'Annunzio in Dutch.
After the break followed the auction of some of the pictures Antonio di Maggio made (you see here the three that are still available. If you buy one of them, you will bring money to the fund for the earthquake).
But also artists Lidia Palumbi, Roberto Caradonna and Gino Calenda di Tavani generously gave some of their best works for the acution. My husband surprised me with one of the chalkworks of Roberto, an artists I always admired.
I will leave you with this last picture (the first two, you might have recognised them, are the Fountain of the 99 Cannelle', and the Spanish Fort in L'Aquila) which has been taken by Antonio by Fontecchio.
It symbolizes in my eyes that nature will prevail on manswork, always. Either by an earthquake, or by flowers growing on the ruins.
No comments:
Post a Comment