ItalyUpdate

Bass Huang Junpeng was the winner of the recent Italy-China opera singers' contest at the Music Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, Rome, in which five Italian sopranos, tenors and bass students pitted their voices against five Chinese students from Peking and Hong Kong.

The Arezzo Antique Fair (Tuscany), Italy's biggest antique street market, celebrates 50 years of activity between the 1-3 June 2018. Centred around the theme Back to '68, the streets and piazzas of the beautifully preserved renaissance town (the Baptistry on Piazza Grande appears in the Urbino version of three '400 visionary depictions of The Ideal City ) will be enlivened with '60s music and themed performances.

Vienna Cammarota, coordinator and guide of Aigae Campania (the Italian Association of Environment and Excursionist Guides) has reached Selinunte (Sicily) after a 2,700 km trek following the footsteps of the German poet and dramatist Wolfgang Goethe.

Prof. Massimo Osanna, curator of the Pompeii archaeological site, has announced the discovery of a whole new area of the buried city, discovered during the recent excavation project. The zone explored, an area of 1,400 sq m near the domus known as the House of the Silver Wedding,

Mental Floss, the USA digital, print and E-commerce media company which focusses on the Millenium generation, has published its list of the twelve most beautiful cemeteries in the world.

Number 1 was the Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome (better known as the Protestant Cemetery, although it contains the tombs of many other non-Roman Catholic faiths). The cemetery stands in a lovely garden beside the Roman Pyramid and attracts many visitors to the last resting place of  the poet John Keats, and the urn of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

No.2: Mirogaj Cemetery of Zagreb, Croatia, with its neo-Renaissance arcade filled with memorial statuary.

No.3: Skogskyrkogarden, Stockholm, Sweden, a converted quarry surrounded by forest and meadows.

No.4: Reilig Odhrŕn, Isle of Iona, Scotland, the sacred island on the edge of the ocean, burial place of scores of Scottish, Irish and Norse kings.

No.5: Pčre Lachaise, Paris, France, the celebrated last resting place of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf.

No.6: Highgate Cemetery, London, England, poetically overgrown, with the grave of Karl Marx and other illustrious dead.

The remaining six were in Warsaw, Japan, India, Prague (the old Jewish Cemetery), Buenos Aires and again Italy with the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno, Genoa, with its celebrated Grieving Angel.

Info:  www.mentalfloss.com

The city of Cortona (Tuscany), in collaboration with the Chianti Wine Association, is launching its seventh photographic competition aimed at capturing happiness. Happiness ON THE MOVE 2018 is open to both professional and amateur photographers who wish to submit their personal images of the elusive state of happiness in its many nuances.

 This weekend join the fishermen at Cervia (Emilia Romagna) for the annual ritual ceremony of the Marriage of the Sea. Like all weddings, this is a happy occasion with food, drink and live music. Good, old-fashioned entertainment is assured on Sunday evening (13 May) when competitors will attempt to climb up the traditional greasy pole, suspended over the water. Cervia's symbolic union with the sea dates back to 1445 and is one of the oldest festivals of its kind in Italy. This, in fact, is the 574 edition.

A sumptuous selection of the wardrobes of the duchesses and queens of the Savoys are on show at the Racconigi Castle, Cuneo (Piemonte) until June 10 2018. The exhibition Sovrane Eleganze (Sovereign Elegance) reproduces magnificent gala dresses worn by members of the Savoy royal family from the Middle Ages until last century, terminating with Margherita di Savoia, the first queen of united Italy and the last queen, Maria José, whose husband's reign ended at the termination of WW2.

The medieval Castle of Santa Severa, situated  on the seafront a few miles north of Rome, has now been transformed into a hostel-museum ready to welcome guests. The fourteen rooms can accommodate couples and family groups at typical youth hostel prices.

The Vatican Museums are opening their doors for evening visits once more this year. Every Friday between the 20 April – 26 October visitors can have the special treat of viewing the rooms outside the normal hours when (hopefully) the ever popular museums will be less crowded.

Opening hours are between 7 pm and 11 pm, with last entry at 9.30 pm.