Hans Werner Henze's house is to be sold

The question of self-knowledge as a condition for recognising the meaning of life, also the question of one's role on the big stage of the world theatre, where everything runs without rehearsal, concerned conductor Roland Böer in his now fourth year as artistic director of the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano. The adopted motto, "Vita, Morte, Meraviglie'" is based on an idiomatic expression in Italian that means knowing someone or something through and through, inside and out. Reflected literally, the saying becomes a profound theme about art and life, with a view to many miracles in the span between life and death.

This is the tenth time Böer has served as musical director of the Cantiere. Initially, he worked together with the composer and former Henze student Detlev Glanert: "Together we were full of energy to revive Henze's basic idea and to continue to realise it," said Böer, who works at the most important theatres in the world and yet comes to Montepulciano year after year to help shape an artistic utopia and keep it alive. No one gets paid here. Transport, accommodation and food are provided, entirely in the spirit of Henze, who was not concerned with profit but with principle: everyone, whether "world star" or music student, should come voluntarily and work under the same economic conditions, out of love for the cause. Not even the compositions are rewarded.

From the very beginning, Henze wanted to "share his capabilities with everyone else" through the "Cantiere" - which means "workshop" or " construction site": "The little mountain nest, full of wonderfully silent architecture, where fox and hare say goodnight to each other", the composer wrote in his memoirs, "I now wanted to transform it into an exciting workshop that would be so attractive to the whole world that Montepulciano would become an international centre for applied didactics, a model case for modern, democratic art education and practice. " This dream has survived to this day, though not without difficulties.

For this, continuous work with the younger generation had to be ensured. Gastón Fournier-Facio had been in charge of the music school in Montepulciano since 1976, which had existed for more than two hundred years but basically only consisted of the brass band. In 1980, there was a first musical highlight with the premiere of Henze's opera "Pollicino", specially conceived for the children's performance possibilities at that time. This principle then set a precedent; to this day, music for children is composed again and again in Montepulciano. Nevertheless, when Detlev Glanert and Luciano Garosi took over the management of the music school in 1989, there were only four teachers and about thirty pupils. Today, the "Istituto di Musica Hans Werner Henze" has almost a thousand pupils and 44 teachers, with lessons for all instruments, bundled in small ensembles and two orchestras.

The "Orchestra Poliziana" is always involved in the Cantiere projects, for example this year in the production of Domenico Cimarosa's opera "L'impresario in angustie" conducted by Roland Böer. In the enchanting Renaissance theatre of Montepulciano, the young orchestra, together with vocal soloists studying at the Conservatorio "Luigi Cherubini" in Florence, succeeded in putting on a moving performance in just two weeks. The staging by Caterina Panti Liberovici, the stage design by Sergio Mariotti, the costumes by Alessandra Garanzini and the poetic-suggestive choreography by Gal Fefferman combined happily with the young singers. This opera and its "supreme aesthetic glory of music" had made such an impression on Goethe in Naples in 1786 that he then translated and adapted it for the court theatre in Weimar. In Montepulciano, the director now expanded the original plot of the "Farsa per musica" about the troubles of an impresario to include a most bitter frame story: with texts by Luigi Pirandello, Johann Gottlieb Stephanie and Giorgio Strehler, Cristian Maria Giammarini performed the role of a director who, in keeping with the Cantiere theme, ponders the seriousness of art.

The programme of 56 events, including mixed forms of dance, street theatre and music, large symphony concerts as well as chamber music events, organ concerts and solo evenings, will be realised this year by a total of four hundred participants in Montepulciano and the surrounding Tuscan area. It opened with a world premiere, held for the first time on the grounds of Sarteano Castle, as a collaboration with the "Nuova Accademia degli Arrischianti". Laura Fatini, the director of this theatre group, has been working with amateurs at a professional level for more than thirty years. She conceived the spectacle "Nelle scarpe di Giufà" - in Giufà's shoes - as a journey with different stops. There she traces the itineraries of humorous stories around the figure with many names, originally modelled on Nasreddin Hodja from the thirteenth century. In Sicily he bore the name Giufà and now started out with a door on his back, which soon became a bridge and finally a saving boat, when in the end different variations of his self in four directions leave the question open whether he is travelling or escaping. The richly coloured costumes were created by African migrants. The music was written by the Portuguese composer Sara Ross, specially tailored to the skills of six children from Montepulciano, united under her direction in the "Ensemble Giufà" of flutes, clarinet, saxophone and percussion. Atmospherically, the thoughtful music followed the stories and suggested, in variations on a thematic core, the path from an indeterminate past to the present. Just like all the performers, the children also noticeably enjoyed taking part, the enthusiasm caught on.

The joy that Hans Werner Henze himself would have shared with everyone about the developments in Montepulciano around the Cantiere was obscured this year by the mourning over the approaching loss of the villa he left behind in Marino near Rome. All efforts to save the house as a cultural heritage of Europe and to preserve it as a cultural meeting place have been in vain so far. Unless a miracle happens to change the German government's mind, the house, which houses paintings by Renzo Vespignani, Eduardo Arroyo, Lila De Nobili and Rosalie, among others, will pass into private hands at the end of the year for a ridiculous price and be vacated. Fifty years of cultural history will be lost forever.