For eons, Rome has been a muse to the great artists. This last Saturday, Fendi beckoned the city’s ingenuity to their doorstep with their Renaissance event, Anima Mundi. The live-streamed event featured a performance by the renowned Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, established in 1585. The group performed Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi’s Estate from The Four Seasons and featured the talented violinist Anna Tifu, who for the occasion was dressed in three different Fendi Couture looks. The concert’s stage is none other than Fendi’s headquarters in Rome, Palazzo Della Civiltà Italiana.
The project is the result of a collaboration between Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Fendi, two realities deeply bound to the city of Rome, each express creativity to the highest degree. The idea of the performance comes from the desire to share with the community, a positive message of rebirth through art, fashion, and music. The symphonic music, whose peculiarity lies in the highest quality of sound, finds for the first time its iconographic expression through Fendi’s Couture dresses which visually personify the narrative of Estate. The performance was celebrated on the summer solstice, symbolizing the common desire to restart, reunite and rejoin. Of all the concerts of the Vivaldi cycle, Estate is the one that leads the listener to a climax of exciting and engaging emotions, rendered by the musical writing with almost “visible” effects.
Conceptually Anima Mundi represents the unifying principle from which each organism takes shape, articulating and differentiating itself through its individual specifications, to then unify under a Universal Soul. Fendi recognized that music well serves this philosophy, as it is a unifying experience. The performance began with the first movement, at dawn, on the steps of Palazzo Della Civiltà Italiana and then transitioned under the arches, maintaining the social distance imposed by the events of recent weeks, the musicians finally rejoined at sunset on the rooftop of the “Square Colosseum” to tune-up for the last movement of Estate. The musicians rejoiced in playing music in person again after months of forced separation. The event celebrated the warmth of music, summer, and company.
