The Italian Institute of Culture of New York continues the program dedicated to the Italian work with an appointment Wednesday 25 March 2026, from 18:30 to 20:30, is scheduled the projection of Viva Verdi!, inserted in the cycle “Adventures in Italian Opera”, edited by critic and disseminator Fred Plotkin. The initiative is part of a programming line that in recent years has aimed at making the Italian operatic repertoire accessible to a non-specialist public, through meetings, projections and conversations with professionals.
The documentary, directed by Yvonne Russo and written along with Christine La Monte, lasts 78 minutes and is presented in English and Italian with subtitles in English. The film obtained an Oscar nomination for the best original song, an element that expanded its visibility even outside the strictly musical circuits. In the middle of the story there is the daily life of artists living at the Casa Verdi, a Milanese structure founded in 1896 by Giuseppe Verdi as a nursing home for musicians in difficulty.
The film follows a group of opera singers and musicians who are in the so-called “third age” of the career, documenting their role as mentors for young students. La Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, still active in Milan, is a unique institution in the international scene: not only does it offer assistance to older artists, but it keeps alive a model of direct transmission of musical knowledge. In the documentary, musical evidence, lessons and moments of daily life become narrative material to tell how operatic tradition is preserved and reinterpreted through contact between generations.
After the screening there is a meeting with Russo and La Monte, in dialogue with Plotkin, who will guide the discussion in English. In the United States Verdi’s repertoire remains among the most represented in the main theatres – from the Metropolitan Opera of New York to the Lyric Opera of Chicago – becoming one of the main Italian cultural assets abroad.
L’articolo At the IIC in New York a screening on musicians who dedicated their lives to Verdi proviene da IlNewyorkese.
