VENICE CARNIVAL 2013: READY TO START STILL AMID CONTROVERSY

It is just a few days to the official start of the 2013 Venice Carnival ‘Vivi i colori - Live in colour’, but numerous controversies are raging in the institutional offices. The councillor for tourism Roberto Pancera in the council’s cultural commission at Ca’ Farsetti unleashed numerous protests with his statement. He declared that, as then reported by the local press, the Venice Carnival is an economic event that evades council control and is increasingly in the hands of foreign managers who make business out of it. Furthermore, the council administration declared that, apart from the shopkeepers’ association AEPE, no other city association has made the smallest financial contribution. These claims unleashed a cross-party protest from numerous city councillors who did not appreciate the lack of cooperation from the associations for a carnival that seems more and more estranged from the city. In any case the festival, which will run from 2 to 12 February and have a prologue on 26 and 27 January, will once again see the St Mark’s area and St Mark’s Square as the symbolic centres of the event with all the related consequences. St Mark’s Square will host the ‘Gran Teatro’, a big stage set up from 2 to 12 February that will host a rich, non-stop programme of shows, fashion parades, musical events and big international guests every day from 11 am to 11 pm. Along with the traditional events like the ‘Volo del Angelo’ (Flight of the Angel), the ‘Festa delle Marie’ (Festival of the Maries) and the ‘Maschera più bella’ (The best mask), it will host more innovative shows like those of dance companies, a circus-theatre and eleven big concerts presenting the pop, folk, rock and international music of the last 50 years. All this in the hope that, as several times reported by the Associazione Piazza San Marco, it does not all once again turn into a ‘village fete’ with little respect shown for the historical-monumental value of the place.