“There where there was grass/now there is a city”, sang Adriano Celentano The boy from Gluck street. Rho is not via Gluck, even if it is a few minutes from the center of Milan, and the place we are talking about was not a meadow, but a perfume factory. It was owned by Roberto De Silva, and it was located in this Milanese suburb of history and industrial traditions. Even today Rho is a suburb of condominiums, factories and hotels built for the Expo, but in place of the perfume factory, Roberto De Silva’s wife, Diana Bracco – industrialist in the pharmaceutical sector and, like her husband, patron and great lover of Music and culture – he wanted a theater to be built and donated it to the inhabitants. 400 seats, very modern, extraordinary acoustics, aesthetically admirable in the interior and exterior, the Roberto De Silva Theater today it hosts quality prose shows, music and a program that is a flagship for an area not very accustomed to culture. Inaugurated quietly in the Covid years, it had a sort of definitive launch a few days ago, when it hosted the Chamber Orchestra of Europa (a group that meets to prepare a tour in the cities that invite it, and which in the past has had Claudio Abbado as its mentor, followed by other great conductors). For the occasion the orchestra was conducted by a musician who in Rome, in his 17 years at the head of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, left a following of admiration for his interpretations and his ability to communicate with the public, to sit among people and infect them with his passion : Antonio Pappano. And if prose already has an audience of spectators, for music, as the president of the Theater Fiorenzo Grassi explains, «there are no traditions here yet, but we want to create them with high quality proposals that range from the Berliner Philarmoniker Quartet to I Musical Afternoons or the Soloists of Pavia, without forgetting the opera. And Pappano promised to return.” For his part, the director born in England to parents who emigrated from the province of Benevento (“I am proud of my surname which I have brought all over the world, and in particular to America where I have lived and worked for a long time. After all, we are all migrants, even Trump is one given his origins”) has put together a program with many American suggestions which, thanks to the pianist Bertrand Chamayou, enthralled the audience present. And this is exactly what he spoke about before the concert «routine kills music, we must be enthusiasts and we must convey emotions and amazement to those who follow us, to those who pay for the ticket.” Pappano, nominated Sir for his artistic merits, has been doing it all his life, as he says in his biography published recently My life in music (Marsiglio Specchi): ever since he listened to his father’s records, he helped his mother clean the office in London, and showed extraordinary talent at the piano, without needing to obtain qualifications or diplomas. And, in memory of Roberto De Silva, this new theater also wants to be a space to experience the great amazement of Music, of Theatre, of finding oneself side by side in the audience.
