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"OVS entrusts the magic of opera to ELIO: an all-Italian cultural and design heritage meant to be discovered and enhanced. To be presented to young people in a brand new version".
Milan, August 2018 - OVS Arts of Italy, the project created in cooperation with the creative team of Davide Rampello & Partners that aims to capitalise on the masterpieces of Italy’s artistic and cultural heritage, has reached its third edition. This year, it wishes to bring the world of fashion closer to the world of theatre and opera.
This is how the new capsule collection of Arts of Italy was born.It will be available in selected stores and online at ovs.it from September 22. The women’s outfits are inspired by five important Italian operas: Gaetano Donizetti's Anna Bolena, Vincenzo Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi, Gioacchino Rossini's La Cenerentola, Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata. The outfits, inspired by the classic garments of the opera’s historical period have been redesigned to have a modern, sexy look. The easy-to-wear cotton t-shirts have embroidered details and prints of phrases from the most famous "arias" of the operas. The skirts, with their large volumes, are made in colours and materials that reflect the personality and the stories of the heroines, and the circles complete and define the style of each one with unique details that exalt the expressive wealth and material of every look proposed.
The Men's collection, on the other hand, is inspired by the nineteenth-century male dress code, typical of the opera-going audience. A wool cloak, in black or vermillion red, is coordinated with the tailcoat and the tuxedo, accessorized with the bow tie and top hat.
"I love this edition of Arts of Italy because it creates a connection between the classic and the contemporary," - says Stefano Beraldo, Managing Director of OVS. "Classical music and opera can be a formidable source of inspiration for singers and musicians, as they certainly were for Queen and many other rock bands. The ability to draw inspiration from the classics has always been a challenge for young people and also a lifeline for their creativity. With Arts of Italy dedicated to opera, Ovs wants to allow people to draw from Italy’s theatrical and music traditions also through an extremely contemporary clothing collection."
OVS asked Elio (of group "Elio e le Storie Tese") to be the "artistic manager" of this edition and to accompany the five selected singers to the "Amadeus Factory", the first talent show dedicated to young musicians from Italian conservatories, promoted by "Amadeus", in creating a CD containing ten famous opera arias. The CD will be distributed as an attachment to the February 2019 issue of the magazine, Italy’s leading music info publication. The five most deserving young musicians will also be awarded the OVS Arts of Italy scholarships, which will allow them to attend major post-graduate courses. Elio, moreover, will lead the final evening of the talent show. And here is how a very important chapter in the history of music culture and Italian prestige can become contemporary dialogue between classic and modern. Elio is the perfect link, the link between two worlds that are not mutually exclusive, but rather that communicate, as on this occasion, in order to convey a concept of excellence to an audience of young people, many of whom continue to see opera as a "dusty leftover " belonging to bygone times.
"Rossini wrote Il Barbiere di Siviglia when he was 24," says Elio, "And Mozart was twenty at the height of his creative streak. That's why opera is young; that's why I immediately liked this project by OVS that wants to make young people and the general public understand that opera, rather than dust, is actually dynamite!"
Even today Italy is universally considered to be the homeland of opera and there is no classical music lover in the world who does not dream of entering one of our wonderful theatres at least once, those magical places that exert a charm that is impossible to resist. In fact, Italian opera not only made the "bel canto" famous internationally, but also contributed to spreading our language everywhere and to making some of the masterpieces from our immense architectural heritage known worldwide.
"For this edition of the project," says Davide Rampello, Artistic Director of OVS Arts of Italy, "we have chosen to capitalise on an Italian cultural excellence that is part of the great wealth of our living cultural heritage: The lyrical theatre, the pride and symbol of our artistic and artisan tradition, is in fact still a living and fascinating world that stands out because of its unique characteristics and its richness of being able to condense an extraordinary multiplicity and variety of arts and skills within itself: from music to singing, from technicians to creative professionals, in which Italy, the country which has the greatest number of theatres in the world, has always boasted an absolute supremacy ".
