The Piccolo Festival with its fourth edition opens up to wide-ranging collaborations and consolidates its deeply educational nature. The partnership with the University of Colorado is extremely significant in this regard to combine our great tradition with overseas enthusiasm and organization.

This meeting was also an important opportunity to understand how enriching positive and open discussion between different cultures can be. A challenge we face every day in a profoundly changed and increasingly global society.

There are many possible ways to address this challenge on which the future of our country and all of Europe is at stake.

We propose to do this through culture and music. This is not meant to be the usual platitude about the universality of musical language, but a concrete demonstration of how working together around a shared project (in this case staging an opera) can prove to be the best way to break down any barriers.

Giorgio Strehler founded the Piccolo Teatro as an international theater, yet tied to its roots. This is what the Piccolo Festival wants to do, which, while investing in internationality without falling into certain mannered exoticisms, does not forget its roots by continuing to

create and offer performances that speak of its territory, to which it is inextricably linked for promotion and enhancement through the medium of culture.

With all these weapons and resolutions, we prepare to face the challenges ahead by investing in the enormous heritage that our country and our Region in

particular possess. Boldly investing in what is truly unique about us will give us the confidence to go far, never forgetting where we started.