CTS Eventim breaks ground on new Milan arena
CTS Eventim has finally broken ground on its new €180 million multi-purpose arena in Milan, northern Italy.
The German live entertainment giant has commissioned TREVI with the first construction phase of the Arena Santa Giulia in Milan, almost a year after it was due to begin.
The 16,000-capacity arena, projected to be finished in two and a half years, will be one of the largest in Italy and will also include an outdoor area of more than 10,000 square metres for open-air events.
“We are now looking forward to the next phase of construction,” says CTS Eventim CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg. “TREVI has decades of experience with this type of specialised foundation work, which will ensure a successful start to the arena’s construction. Together, we aim to create a high-quality events venue in Italy that will transform Milan into an attractive hub for the sports and entertainment industries with a global reach.”
“We aim to create a high-quality events venue in Italy that will transform Milan into an attractive hub for sports and ents”
Initially, the arena – part of the Milano Santa Giulia urban development project – will be used for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic games after which CTS will continue to operate it.
The venue will compete with Oak View Group and Live Nation’s Santa Giulia Arena – which will also be utilised in the Olympics – as well as the 12,700-seat Mediolanum Forum in Assago, near Milan, which has served the city since 1990 and is one of two Italian members of the European Arena Association (EAA).
An older open-air venue, the 10,000-capacity Arena Civica, which opened in 1807, is also capable of hosting concerts, as is the 80,000-cap. San Siro stadium.
CTS Eventim’s venue portfolio also includes the Lanxess Arena (cap. 18,000) in Cologne, the KB Hallen (4,500) in Copenhagen, the Waldbühne (22,290) in Berlin and the Eventim Apollo (2,500) in London.
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Study: Singing in some languages riskier than others
Researchers in Japan have found it is easier to spread coronavirus particles when singing in certain European languages than in Japanese.
By comparing performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Verdi’s La traviata with a popular Japanese children’s song, scientists at Riken, the Kyoto Institute of Technology, Kobe University and the Toyohashi University of Technology discovered that singing in consonant-heavy German and Italian produced twice as many as per minute (1,302 and 1,166, respectively) as Japanese (580).
The study, commissioned by the Japan Association of Classical Music Presenters, recruited eight professional singers, four male and four female, take turns performing short solos without a mask in a “laboratory-clean room”, and follows an experiment by the Japanese Choral Association which pitted Beethoven’s Ninth against a Japanese graduation song with similar results.
Speaking to CBS News, Toru Niwa, director of the Association of Classical Music Presenters, and Masakazu Umeda, his counterpart at the Choral Association, say the studies reflect how Japanese is spoken, with soft, gently-voiced consonants in comparison to the European languages’ harder sounds.
Japanese has soft, gently-voiced consonants in comparison to the European languages’ harder sounds
The Choral Association additionally found that singing in nonsense syllables composed entirely of the Japanese vowels, “ah, ee, oo, eh, oh”, yielded almost no aerosol emissions at all.
Niwa adds, however, that while there have been coronavirus outbreaks at several amateur choirs, professional groups have yet to record a single community transmission event, regardless of the language being sung. “Classical music is basically the western canon,” he says. “If we stopped singing in French, Italian and German, we wouldn’t be able to perform anymore.”
The science on whether singing increases the risk of coronavirus infection, and the effect of singing volume on transmission, is unclear, with at least one study backed by the UK government finding last year that singing is no riskier than talking. However, with many major live music markets closed – and the majority of those that are open still mandating social distancing – it matters little to most artists and concert professionals.
This article forms part of IQ’s Covid-19 resource centre – a knowledge hub of essential guidance and updating resources for uncertain times.
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DEAG signs new long-term deal with classical stars
Deutsche Entertainment AG (DEAG) has followed up yesterday’s positive H1 financial results by extending its deal with popular classical singers Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov.
DEAG will have exclusive rights to stage concerts and open-air events, as well as sponsorship and TV rights, by the husband-and-wife duo in the GSA (Germany, Switzerland and Austria) region until 2022. Netrebko is a Russian-born soprano, now based in Vienna with Austrian citizenship, and Eyvazov a Azerbaijani operatic tenor.
The company has also secured an initial option for extending the deal to other European countries, in a move it says “underscores DEAG’s prominent classical music portfolio”.
“We are laying the foundations for future positive business development in our classical and jazz segment”
“We’re proud to already be in our 14th year of cooperation with Anna Netrebko and are excited to present many more concerts from this exceptional artist in the future,” says DEAG chairman Peter Schwenkow. “Anna Netrebko is one of the greatest sopranos of the century and has inspired millions with her performances.
“In addition, we are laying the foundations for future positive business development in our classical and jazz segment.”
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