Vinicio Capossela - Ancient keys

“Immense stands have consumed the voracious time. Only traces remain among the collapses and ruins of walls, roofs lie buried in vast ruins."  Thus Rutilio Namaziano, praefectus Urbis of Romeus, in 415 AD. - embarking at the portus Augusti north of Ostia to reach his homeland Gallia and thus fleeing from a city and an empire that were now collapsing under the attacks of the barbarians - he sang in the opera in De Reditu Suo (On my return), with great melancholy and deep nostalgia, the lost greatness of Rome, observing and noting its end in a general, material and moral decadence.

Thus Vinicio Capossela, ideally linking himself to the work of the Latin poet, in the unique concert entitled Antichi tasti (Ancient keys) as part of the Ostia Antica Festival 2024 at the Ostia Antica Theater, with words and music composes a concert which tries to put together the splinters of a world that seems to be falling apart, offering a critical vision of the present, where the thirst for power and wealth, injustice, oppression, violence and war reign today as then.

The concert, however, is also a journey through personal "ruins" - intertwined with contemporary ones - set to music, and in this respect it is also linked to the historic concert in the summer of 2006, part of the tour of the album Ovunque Proteggi (Protect everywhere), in an itinerary in which, after a long journey through sailors, prophets, whales and bestiaries, arrives at the decadence of our days. In order to do this, the formation brings back the core of the musicians from the Ostia Antica concert eighteen years ago, together with their new traveling companions.

Photo credits: Ostia Antica Festival 2024 official site