This year's special edition for the Carnival of Viareggio which celebrates 250 years of life, from 4 to 25 February next. The tradition was born from a parade of festively decorated carriages along the Via Regia on Shrove Tuesday in 1873. The carnival event Viareggio, after a century and a half, is the living testimony of an art in which mockery, satire, allegory and desire to escape find form in the creativity of the papier-mâché masters. And the buildings of the now imminent popular event are an ideal invitation to a great collective celebration rite.
Viareggio Carnival
On the nine allegorical floats of the first category, four of the second, between the nine masquerades and the ten isolated masks, which will participate in the Carnival of Viareggio 2023, there is a great desire to have fun and be ironic in spite of a world that seems to be getting worse and worse. As per tradition, large allegorical machines, works of art and theatrical machines will parade with increasingly complex movements and grandiose scenographic effects. In the streets of the city the extras will give life to shows, historical re-enactments, art events.
And, again, cultural and musical events will be the protagonists of the celebrations of the important anniversary. The program includes the inauguration ceremony and the raising of the flag on February 4, followed by the first masked course and the fireworks display. The second masked course is on the bill for Sunday 12 February. Shrove Thursday will be the turn of the third. Followed by the fourth scheduled for Sunday 19 February. On Shrove Tuesday the fifth masked course will take place while the sixth is scheduled for Saturday 25 February. They will close the Carnival Viareggio the reading of the verdicts for the most voted floats and the fireworks display.
Side events
There will also be side events that will further enrich the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Carnival. Between these "Let the party begin…”that is, the great exhibition that tells the story of the allegorical float in the Italian tradition and also the evolution of the masks that are born with the Commedia dell'Arte. Carnivalarte will represent the union between Carnival and art, told in an exhibition that sees the art collection of the Viareggio Carnival Foundation. Hands in the dough it is the exhibition on the first allegorical floats, modeled in plaster on iron frames. Works created by shipwrights and caulkers, very skilled naval carpenters of the dock, together with local painters, decorators and sculptors.
The rich Carnival program also includes re-enactments with historic carriages, the Grand Ball of the XNUMXth century. And finally the Carnival Experience at the Espace Gilbert, a new exhibition space in which to prolong the "life" of the great allegorical constructions.
(Photo from the Viareggio Carnival Facebook page)
