Duran Duran net Italian first with double sellout
Duran Duran are set to make history with their second consecutive sellout performance at Italy’s Lucca Summer Festival (LSF).
The famed British group played the 9,000-cap Piazza Napoleone stage on Sunday (21 July) and return for a second helping tonight (23 July), setting a new milestone in the process.
“Duran Duran was the first act in 26 years to sell out Piazza Napoleone twice,” Mimmo D’Alessandro, CEO of promoter D’Alessandro e Galli (Di & Gi) tells IQ.
“More than 18,000 people attended the two Duran Duran shows, with 14% of the audience coming from abroad and 70% coming from outside Tuscany. This not only represents a deserved tribute to such an iconic band but also a sign of the growth the Lucca Summer Festival is experiencing.”
Tickets were priced €60-100 for the shows, which mark the band’s only Italian dates of 2024 and their first performances at LSF since 2012.
“For the first time, we had more than 220,000 people attending our festival”
Staged in the Mura Storiche area, next to the Lucca City Walls, LSF concludes later this week with concerts by Toto (24 July) and Gazelles (26 July), capping a record-breaking year for the Tuscany festival.
“This edition had one of the best line-ups ever, with sensational artists such as Eric Clapton, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rod Stewart, Lenny Kravitz, among others,” beams D’Alessandro. “Ed Sheeran broke another record, being the first act to sell out our City Walls venue twice.
“For the first time, we had more than 220,000 people attending our festival. With these numbers and the enthusiastic feedback we received from the audience, press, and artists, we’re looking very confident about our future editions. We aim to become more and more a must-visit festival for music lovers around the world.”
Other performers during the outdoor series, which also utilises a separate 40,000-cap venue, included Swedish House Mafia, Diana Krall, John Fogerty, Mika and Sam Smith.
Earlier this year, Di & Gi extended its agreement with the municipal council regarding LSF, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, to 2028.
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Andrea Bocelli plans all-star events in Italy
Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli will celebrate his third decade in the music business with an event in his hometown of Lajatico.
Andrea Bocelli 30: The Celebration is slated for 15, 17 and 19 July at Tuscany’s Teatro del Silenzio, a natural amphitheatre of which Bocelli serves as honorary president.
The event will feature appearances by a plethora of Bocelli’s superstar friends including Ed Sheeran, Shania Twain, Jon Batiste, Russell Crowe, Sofia Vergara, David Foster, Christian Nodal, Sofia Carson, Laura Pausini, Tiziano Ferro, Zucchero, Giorgia, Matteo Bocelli and Virginia Bocelli.
The 65-year-old will also be joined by classical stars such as Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Lang Lang, Aida Garifullina, Bryn Terfel and Nadine Sierra.
“30 years later, I can only imagine celebrating my career and my life here at Teatro del Silenzio”
“As a child, I learned to dream about my future in the enchanted silence of these hills,” says Bocelli. “Then life made that dream happen. Today, 30 years later, I can only imagine celebrating my career and my life, its strength, and its wondrous beauty here at Teatro del Silenzio, surrounded by such wonderful artists and friends. I want to thank everyone who helped my childhood dreams come true with an unforgettable concert.”
In addition, Mercury Studios, Maverick, Impact Productions and CITYSOUND & Events are working together to produce the Andrea Bocelli 30: The Celebration concert film, which will be directed by Sam Wrench.
“You can’t get much more cinematic than Andrea Bocelli against the Tuscan landscape. I’m incredibly excited to bring this once-in-a-lifetime concert to cinemas around the world with his unique voice, this world-class team and enviable list of special guests,” says Wrench, who recently directed Taylor Swift – The Eras Tour, the highest-grossing concert film of all time.
Tickets to Andrea Bocelli 30: The Celebration range from €191.52 to €1675.80 including fees.
Prior to the event in Italy, Bocelli will perform at BST Hyde Park in London, becoming the first classical headliner of the 65,000-capacity event.
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Inside Di and Gi’s new La Prima Estate festival
Italy’s D’Alessandro e Galli (Di and Gi) is targeting a younger demographic with its new 10,000-cap Tuscany festival La Prima Estate, according to organisers.
The six-day festival will debut in Bussola Domani Park in Lido Di Camaiore, Versilia from 21-26 June, with headline acts including Duran Duran, The National and Bonobo.
Di and Gi, which also runs the region’s established, month-long Lucca Summer Festival, is billing La Prima Estate – which translates to “the first summer” – as “the ultimate festival holiday destination”, combining live shows with a series of unique experiences drawing on the beauty and culture of the local area. Activities will include art, wine and culinary experiences, as well as mindfulness and sports.
“We have an unbelievably beautiful venue, a brand new park, just 50 metres from the beach. It’s the perfect place for a festival,” promoter Enrico D’Alessandro tells IQ. “We’re going to have six consecutive nights, with four artists on stage every night. But we’re also going to sell packages that include not only a hotel, but also a beach cabana, and we’re going to plan activities all day for the audience. This place is a natural paradise, so you can do cooking events with major chefs on the beach, cycle events with professionals, meet and greets and yoga at dawn.
“We want to give the full package to the audience. The event itself is no longer enough, we have to provide a full vacation experience and this festival will be all about that.”
“For audiences today, just attending a conference is no longer enough”
With other artists on the bill including Courtney Barnett, Easy Life, Jungle, Mura Masa and Beabadoobee, with more to be announced this month, D’Alessandro says the musical direction is along similar lines to Primavera Sound and Sonar.
“We’re looking for a younger audience, although not so young,” he says. “The park is huge, but it is going to be split between a concert area and a big food and beverage and leisure area because we want to create a very relaxed atmosphere,” he says. “We want people to enjoy the full experience – that’s what we think the future of live music will be and that’s what we think the offering of live events should include.”
The festival will take over the whole town of Lido Di Camaiore and will be topped off by aftershow parties at nightclubs, hosted by the Apollo Club from Milan, each night.
“Our impression as promoters of live music is that for audiences today, just attending a concert is no longer enough,” adds Di and Gi CEO Mimmo D’Alessandro. “La Prima Estate wants to build on this desire, accelerated by the post-pandemic euphoria to fully enjoy free time, and combine an evening of live music with a series of experiences related to sport, the sea, food and other incredible activities during the rest of the festival goers’ stay. A new concept of a festival for which we consider Versilia and Tuscany to be the ideal place.”
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Lucca Summer Festival gears up for 2022 comeback
Promoters of Italy’s Lucca Summer Festival (LSF) have spoken to IQ about the return of the star-studded concert series.
Justin Bieber became the latest headliner to be confirmed for the month-long LSF in Tuscany earlier this week. The Canadian singer will perform a 40,000-cap show in the Mura Storiche area, next to the Lucca City Walls, on 31 July. He joins a 2022 line-up already featuring Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets (25 June), Liam Gallagher + Kasabian (6 July), John Legend (9 July) and Robert Plant + Alison Krauss (14 July), with Celine Dion confirmed for 15 July next year.
With the 2020 and 2021 festivals falling victim to the pandemic, Enrico D’Alessandro of event promoter D’Alessandro e Galli (Di and Gi) tells IQ he is looking forward to making up for lost time.
“Since we work mostly with international artists, it was very difficult for us to do even the smaller gigs, so we remained totally still for a couple of years,” he says. “Last year, there were limits on capacity – events were only permitted up to 1,000 people, which was too low for us to work. We thought about putting on a special edition, with a smaller capacity, but it didn’t feel right, so we preferred to wait.
“Now we’re excited to go back promoting live music, but we’re excited for the audience as well, because we know that these upcoming events will have a different flavour, it will be like a rebirth in some ways.”
A number of the headline acts for LSF 2022, which will also utilise a second, 8,000-cap venue, had been booked to play two years ago. But organisers were forced to admit defeat in their bid to reschedule a Paul McCartney show, originally slated for June 2020.
“That was a dream we had chased for so many years and we were very close, but unfortunately we had to face the reality of the situation,” sighs D’Alessandro. “We were able to save some of those shows, but it really hurts to to have lost McCartney.”
“We’re trying to expand the festival to a younger audience”
The addition of Bieber signals a change in tack for the festival, which has welcomed the likes of the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Roger Waters, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Tom Jones, Van Morrison, Roger Waters, Stevie Wonder and Ennio Morricone since launching in 1998.
“At the beginning, it was hard to convince artists to choose a small little city in Tuscany over major cities. But now, thank God, sometimes the agent and the artists even ask us to play because word has spread,” says D’Alessandro. “Lucca has always had an adult audience, so we try to book the biggest music legends and give the audience the opportunity to enjoy big artists, who you would normally see in stadiums or arenas, in this tiny square in the heart of Tuscany, surrounded by trees.
“We like to keep this flavour for the festival because we know that the foreign audience loved it. There were cases when the foreign audience was the majority of the audience – with Tom Jones and Van Morrison, more than 50% of the audience came from abroad.
“This year, we’re going to satisfy that kind of audience with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, John Legend or Nick Mason, but we’re trying to expand the festival to a younger audience. That is something we’d started doing in the past – we had Imagine Dragons, Green Day, Queens of the Stone Age. Bieber is probably the biggest around in that specific [youth] market, and we are excited to be chosen among the very few festivals he is playing this summer. For us, it’s a privilege, and we are excited to welcome audience members from every part of Europe.”
He adds: “Also, to celebrate the comeback of live shows, we wanted to have more domestic artists than usual, so we’re going to do six or seven shows with the biggest domestic artists around.”
The LSF team has also announced the launch of new 10,000-cap Tuscany festival La Prima Estate, which will run from 21-26 June. Located just 50 metres from the sea in Bussola Domani Park in Lido Di Camaiore, Versilia, it will host four international artists each night. Headline acts include The National, Duran Duran, Bonobo, Courtney Barnett, Jungle and Mura Masa.
With Italian prime minister Mario Draghi announcing the country will exit its state of emergency on 31 March, D’Alessandro is filled with hope about the forthcoming season.
“We should have full capacity for open air events instantly, so we are very confident that this summer will look like 2019 – at least for open air events,” he says. “We don’t know yet if the green [vaccine] pass will be needed. It looks like it will be needed until mid June but we don’t have certainty on that yet. Of course, we understand that indoor events are the ones at bigger risk, but let’s hope we won’t have any bad variants and the situation will stay under control.”
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