PREMIO MONINI

After all, it is only a window, but looking out from there is becoming an increasingly coveted gesture for artists participating in Festival dei Due Mondi. John Malkovich, Adriana Kucerova, Adriana Asti, Claudio Santamaria, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Thomas Copeland, who have been able to do so in the past three years, know something about this. Because appearing to that window, the same to that Giancarlo Menotti used to look out of to greet and contemplate his Festival, means having won "A Window on the 2Mondi".The Prize was established by the Monini family in 2010 after they purchased Casa Menotti to create a museum and documentation center on the Festival. Along with the house, the Moninis wanted to bring back that gesture, a never-forgotten tradition of the Spoleto kermesse. So each year a quality jury selects the recipient of the award and a "special prize": the choice falls on a world-renowned artist and an exponent of the young generation present at the Festival to represent the future of art and the event.

Arrived in 2013 at the fourth edition "The Window" (not only that of Casa Menotti, but also the actual prize, which is a scale reproduction of it) is in the desires of many stars who thus hope to enter this selection of artists. An image destined moreover to to remain in the memory because the winners are immortalized at the window from a photographic shot signed by the famous portrait painter Fabian Cevallos that will enrich the images of the gallery of the "Greats of the Festival" displayed in the halls of Casa Menotti itself.

For the first time this year, the names of the two artists called to to make that highly meaningful gesture and to receive the honor in the 2013 edition were announced in advance.

The Monini Prize will be awarded on July 13 at at 11 to Willem Dafoe. Multiple Oscar nominee and star of cult films such as Platoon, Mississippi Burning - The Roots of Hate, The Last Temptation of Christ, Dafoe is at the Festival with Daniil Kharms' play The Old Woman, where he stars alongside to Baryshnikov, directed by Robert Wilson. Moreover, this is a period of intense work for him. Two new films of his are, in fact, coming out: Boot Tracks, by David Jacobson, and Odd Thomas, based from on a novel by Dean Koontz. He is also busy in Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace and on the set of the much-talked-about Nymphomaniac, to be directed by Lars Von Trier.

The day before, on July 12 at at 11 the "special award" will go to Matthew Aucoin, musician, composer, conductor: very young genuine talent of music. to only 23 years old, Aucoin already has an enviable career: he is the youngest assistant conductor in the history of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His third opera, on which he is currently working, was commissioned by the American Repertory Theater and will be premiered next year, to Boston, conducted from Diane Paulus. Spoleto audiences, who met him in 2012 as pianist in Britten's Turn of the Screw , will admire him this year as the star of ten concerts at the San Nicolo cloister.

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