The Ravello Festival is also popularly known as the "Wagner Festival" and is an annual summer festival of music and the arts held in the town of

Ravello Ravello (Campanian: ) is a town and ''comune'' situated above the Amalfi Coast in the province of Salerno, Campania, Southern Italy, with approximately 2,500 inhabitants. Its scenic location makes it a popular tourist destination, and earned it a ...

on the

Amalfi Amalfi (, , ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Salerno, in the region of Campania, Italy, on the Gulf of Salerno. It lies at the mouth of a deep ravine, at the foot of Monte Cerreto (1,315 metres, 4,314 feet), surrounded by dramatic c ...

coast in the

Campania Campania (, also , , , ) is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the i ...

region of

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. The festival has been held yearly since 1953 when the town fathers decided to use the historical fact of the visit to Ravello in 1880 by German composer

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

as a way to promote tourism and bolster the economy of the area in the difficult years following the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The composer had been so taken with the beauty of the

Villa Rufolo A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became sm ...

in Ravello that he is said to have proclaimed, in reference to a character in his own opera

Parsifal ''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival'' ...

, "Here is the enchanted garden of Klingsor." Although the original emphasis during the festival was on Wagner's music, the event has since grown into an almost two-month-long presentation of a wide variety of music featuring large orchestras, chamber groups, jazz, art shows, dance, photographic exhibits, discussion groups and a chance to meet and talk with the featured artists, many of whom are of world renown.

External links

Ravello Festival website

Ravello Concert Society website
{{coord missing, Italy Classical music festivals in Italy Ravello Annual events in Italy