Tonight, the Pažaislis Music Festival invites you to an encounter with music born from the voices of people: from balconies, squares, village festivals, and community gatherings. The project “Greetings from Italy: BELLA CIAO” opens up Italy’s living cultural memory – songs that intertwine history, everyday life, resistance, and hope.

The world-famous song “Bella Ciao” becomes a starting point for a broader musical narrative. The program features partisan and work songs, love ballads, religious hymns, protest and festive melodies – all of which make up the multi-layered musical landscape of Italy. This is not official history, but the history of the people: about dignity, community, and the pursuit of freedom.

The musical director of the project is Riccardo Tesi, one of the most prominent creators of the contemporary Italian folk scene. Together with an ensemble of exceptional voices and instrumentalists, he revives songs that have retained their artistic value over the decades and are no less relevant today. The program combines the rhythmic energy of southern Italian tarantellas, the fragility of lyrical ballads, and the intensity of social songs, all performed with authentic temperament and lively stage energy.

This concert expands the festival’s genre boundaries, bringing in the colors of Southern Europe and the energy of living tradition. Here, song becomes not only music, but also a shared experience – a bridge between the past and the present, between the stage and the listener.