The Hopkins Center for the Arts deepened its ambitious international partnerships and impact in December, showing how art has the power to unite.
Thirty-seven student musicians from the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, led by director Filippo Ciabatti, traveled to Tuscany in central Italy in the educational and cross-cultural venture. The Dartmouth students partnered with peers from four leading conservatories across Tuscany, sharing music stands and inspiration as they rehearsed and performed an exquisite program throughout the region.
The Dartmouth musicians visited the conservatories of Florence (Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini), Lucca (Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Boccherini), Livorno (Conservatorio “Pietro Mascagni”), and Siena (Istituto di Alta Formazione Musicale “Rinaldo Franci”), gaining experience as musicians and deepening their understanding of each other’s musical heritage and journeys.
Through their times deciphering conductor notes in Italian, wandering timeless streets together, and performing in iconic concert halls, the students were able to feel and show the power of mutual creative exchange.
Dartmouth had initiated a partnership with a tour in 2018. Drawing on long-standing personal and professional relationships in his home region, Ciabatti began with the Rinaldo Franci Conservatory of Siena, where he had studied. The December trip was a time to return for a deeper collaboration and larger scope for the students and public alike.
The Hopkins Center visit proved to be a catalyst, instigating a rare partnership between all four conservatories of Tuscany. Anna Carli, president of the Rinaldo Franci Conservatory of Siena, was inspired by the scale of Mahler’s First Symphony and its opportunity to involve more students across the region. She teamed up with her counterparts in Florence, Lucca, and Livorno to include their students as well as host concerts in their hometowns. Rather than competing over students and faculty, the conservatories collaborated to make music across local and global borders.
“Putting together a piece with almost 100 people on a stage would benefit both sides,” Ciabatti said. “We were able to explore repertoire that is challenging both in sheer numbers and in musical importance.”
The program explored works from Gustav Mahler’s youth: Songs of a Wayfarer and Symphony No. 1, Titan.
Songs of a Wayfarer featured the internationally acclaimed French mezzo-soprano Antoinette Dennefeld.
Titan is a complex and emotional song symphony, Ciabatti said. “It is called the Titan because of its width and the way it expresses emotions: anguish, uncertainty, and ultimately hope,” he added. “It is a piece that speaks very much to young people.”
And to the young people it spoke: “What I remember is the feeling of freedom as we navigated through the many moods of Mahler as a single, cohesive unit,” said Sophia Jiang ’28. “In that moment, the symphony didn’t just feel like a piece of music—it became a number of countless transitions from emotion to emotion, leaping through pastoral scenes of the first movement and into the waltz of the second movement, wallowing in the third movement’s funeral march, and finally unleashing the full titan in the finale.”
The encore, however, had to be “a piece of America,” as Ciabatti put it. Hoedown by Aaron Copland was a rowdy joy for performers and audience members.
The performances resonated in the landmark venues of Teatro Verdi, Teatro Goldoni, Chiesa di San Francesco, and Teatro de’ Rinnovati, offering new audiences for the students and showcasing the power of institutional collaboration.
The moment was especially meaningful for Ciabatti as he conducted for the first time at Teatro Verdi in Florence, where he often attended concerts as a young student.
It was a trip of firsts for many students, including Evan Easley ’29, who was traveling outside the United States for the first time. “This trip with the DSO has been unreal beyond my imagination,” he said.
And Ava Rosenbaum ’26 said, “Touring has been a very magical experience, seeing a new culture, seeing how beautiful Italy is and the different relationship that Italy has with musicians. It has been a big learning experience, culturally, intellectually, and musically.”
Each concert was presented in full partnership with conservatory musicians. At every rehearsal and performance, the students came together as a single orchestra, standing side by side, sharing musical sheets. That meant close, intense daily interactions despite linguistic and cultural differences. “It was really interesting to only be communicating with music for the most part. It was wonderful to bridge that barrier with music,” Easley added.
Despite the conservatory students having little time to prepare for such a sophisticated program, the performances came together seamlessly. “I feel I had this enormous privilege,” said Chiara Bosco of the Conservatorio Boccherini di Lucca. “It’s something I’ll carry with me: the sharing we did across language of a single passion, which is music.”
In some cases, the Dartmouth and Italian students connected over love of food, literature, and places they wished to visit, and supported one another. “Not only did the Italian students provide a sense of belonging in an unfamiliar place, they also helped me feel more secure during the performances,” said Jiang.
This quick-found affinity was foreseen by the institutions organizing the tour, including Anna Carli, president of the Rinaldo Franci Conservatory of Siena. “Young people today are so strongly oriented toward an international outlook and a hope for the common good,” she said. “An experience of this kind speaks to all of us at a time like the present, when collaboration, listening to others, and paying attention to what is happening in the world are absolutely essential.”
The collaboration also drew support beyond the conservatories. The president of Tuscany, Eugenio Giani, recognized the importance of this relationship, calling it “a cultural synergy with the United States.” He endorsed the project and held a news conference which was attended by all the conservatories and by the Hop’s Howard Gilman ’44 Executive Director Mary Lou Aleskie.
“The Dartmouth students built community by making music together, with trust and friendships that are lasting,” she said. “They became active partners in a conservatory, working alongside students studying to be among the greatest musicians in the world. Their learning was deeply immersed in Italy’s cultural context and enriched by interactions with Italian peers, which made the experience all the more authentic.”
Leading up to the Tuscany initiative, the trip marked the premiere of the newest Hop ensemble, the Dartmouth Chamber Players, with performances in Rome and Siena. This adaptable ensemble includes eight of Dartmouth’s most dedicated student musicians with Brian Messier, director of bands and senior liaison for Hopkins Center Ensembles and Marcia Cassidy, assistant conductor of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, as faculty leads.
The Chamber Players performed in the Borromini Room at the Donna Camilla Savelli, a historic refectory within a former Baroque convent in Trastevere. The program, a vibrant dialogue between Italian and American traditions, includes Mother and Child by William Grant Still, Hoedown by Aaron Copland, and Ancient Airs and Dances by Ottorino Respighi. In Siena, they shared the stage of the Accademia Chigiana with the Italian-based Leviosa Quartet.
For Ciabatti, the experience confirmed a broader takeaway. “There is a conversation, there is a back and forth between the conductor, the musicians, the state partners, and ultimately, everyone melds into a single unit,” Ciabatti said. “Music can be a way in which we learn to listen and be together, respectfully, intelligently, and with a sense of self that is not only self-serving, but it serves as something bigger than us, and that this can go beyond music, too.”
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Enjoy the full concert filmed at the Institute of Musical Studies “Rinaldo Franci” in Siena on YouTube in a virtual watch party at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 15.
