In the Veneto region, popular imagination has always given shape to fantastic stories, sprung from the popular imagination and handed down from generation to generation.
A veritable cultural heritage that finds its rightful appreciation thanks to “Veneto: Shows of Mystery”, an event promoted by the Veneto Region that is concretely translated thanks to Unpli Veneto, giving life to tales of witches and demons, ancient tyrants and old ghosts ready to be conjured up to reveal the region’s most hidden secrets and legendary and mysterious places.
The festival, now in its 15th edition, was officially inaugurated yesterday, Saturday 14 October, in Piazzola sul Brenta (PD), in the presence of Roberto Ciambetti, President of the Veneto Regional Council, with the special event ‘Veneto di Fuoco’ (Veneto of Fire), a show held in the former spinning mill of Piazzola sul Brenta and staging legends and mysteries of the Veneto region linked to fire, a fil-rouge that will unite all the events. After the last edition dedicated to water, for 2023 it will in fact be fire that will be the theme around which the festival will develop, an element that, with its duality, continues to powerfully fascinate popular culture, rich as it is in meanings and interpretations.
In the Veneto region, popular imagination has always given shape to fantastic stories, sprung from the popular imagination and handed down from generation to generation.
A veritable cultural heritage that finds its rightful appreciation thanks to “Veneto: Shows of Mystery”, an event promoted by the Veneto Region that is concretely translated thanks to Unpli Veneto, giving life to tales of witches and demons, ancient tyrants and old ghosts ready to be conjured up to reveal the region’s most hidden secrets and legendary and mysterious places.
The festival, now in its 15th edition, was officially inaugurated yesterday, Saturday 14 October, in Piazzola sul Brenta (PD), in the presence of Roberto Ciambetti, President of the Veneto Regional Council, with the special event ‘Veneto di Fuoco’ (Veneto of Fire), a show held in the former spinning mill of Piazzola sul Brenta and staging legends and mysteries of the Veneto region linked to fire, a fil-rouge that will unite all the events. After the last edition dedicated to water, for 2023 it will in fact be fire that will be the theme around which the festival will develop, an element that, with its duality, continues to powerfully fascinate popular culture, rich as it is in meanings and interpretations.
“What is staged and revealed in the venues of “Veneto:
Shows of Mystery” is an intangible heritage of incalculable value, kept in a treasure chest of unspoilt nature and unrivalled cities of art,” emphasises Alberto Toso Fei, Artistic Director of the event. “A heritage of narration and fascination that combines with the artistic and cultural treasures of a region that boasts some of the highest peaks in Europe and one of the continent’s largest lagoons; one of the most significant territories of our country, rich in the vicissitudes and records of civilisation.Learning while having fun, in short, also thanks to the Pro Loco venete, always ready to transform the incredible intangible heritage of the Veneto tradition, its beliefs, its fantastic figures and its deepest essence into a collective celebration”.
“Re-proposing ‘Veneto: Shows of Mystery’ means confirming our commitment and our desire to transmit, from generation to generation, our Veneto culture,” concludes Fabrizio Tonon, president of UNPLI Venice and referent of the festival. “With this festival, we do so through storytelling and representation, retracing historical events made legendary by collective participation.
A vast cultural wealth, that of the Veneto, of which the event in Piazzola sul Brenta gave a taste thanks to the participation of some twenty artists who, under the direction of Roberto ‘Popi’ Frison, recounted legends and mysteries that cloak the entire region.
In an hour and a half, amidst solar chariots, fire-breathing dragons, blessed women in procession with human limbs used as torches, the heretic Pietro d’Abano and the tyrant Ezzelino III, fatuous fires, saints and rituals with fire, the audience was able to understand the many facets that make up the intangible heritage of the Veneto region. The darlings of the evening were the friendly dwarves of Dolomite legends who came to tell the story of Sabja de Fek, or King Odolghes’ sword of fire. An evening experienced in an evocative atmosphere thanks to lighting effects and animations by focolieri, made even more enjoyable by the fragrance and sweetness of Romano’s ‘panna e storti’ (waffle cones with whipped cream) offered to the public by reenactors in early 20th century costumes.
But there will be hundreds of events in Veneto: Shows of Mystery that, until 26 November, will animate various locations in Veneto with shows linked to fire, the purest of the elements and also the most mysterious, being the only one that encloses – together – good and evil.
