Italian Festivals in Melbourne

Summary

The Spoleto Festival commenced in Melbourne in 1980, having emerged from the success of the Carlton Lygon Street Festa and also evolving into the Melbourne International Festival.

Introduction:

The Italian community was, until recently, one of the largest and longest established non-English speaking migrant communities in Australia and Victoria. Their cultural and artistic expressions have been a vehicle to celebrate their heritage and identity.

The community's cultural pride became increasingly visible and vocal in the wake of a report reviewing migrants services authored by Frank Galbally, prominent Melbourne lawyer and commissioned by the Fraser Governent titled Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services for Migrants, (known as the Galbally Report).

As Australians increasingly embraced the contribution and richness that migrant communities were bringing to Australia, 'multiculturalism' became a political and socially progressive catch cry. With this changing social landscape, public expressions of identity and affirmations of heritage, became acceptable and were celebrated by the broader community.

Origins of the Spoleto Festival:

The Spoleto Festival (officially Spoleto Melbourne - Festival of the Three Worlds) commenced in Melbourne in 1987 and became one of Australia's most recognised cultural events. In 1959, the originating festival in Spoleto in the region of Umbria, Italy, branched out into South Carolina, USA. With Melbourne's inclusion, it then was known as Festival Spoleto Dei Tre Mondi (Spoleto Festival of the Three Worlds).

By 1985, the popularity of the already existing Lygon Street Festival and Italian Arts Festival's encouraged organisers to reach out to the Spoleto Festival in Italy. A quest to invite a diverse range of artists of the Italian Spoleto Festa to perform in Australia resulted in a formal agreement with the Spoleto Festival Italy organisers and the Victorian Labor Government.

The Melbourne Spoleto Festival's first director, composer Gian Carlo Menotti, founder of the Spoleto Festa in Umbria and well-known Italian artistic director, inaugurated the festival with a parade of painted trams down Swanston Street. The first headline act was Madame Butterfly performed by the Victorian State Opera.

The festival triggered some controversy, accused by some critics of being an exercise in 'cultural cringe' by not headlining local performers. Initially set up to celebrate all things Italian, it was felt that the Festival warranted the importing of Italian entertainers to ensure its popularity. Its success led to the establishment of the Italian Arts Festival, chaired by Carlton solicitor, Luciano Bini.

Melbourne Spoleto evolved to become the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts in 1990. In 1993, it became known as the Melbourne International Arts Festival and today it is referred to as the Melbourne Festival. It has had a number of high profile Artistic Directors including Clifford Hocking, Leo Schofield, Robyn Archer and Richard Wherrett.

Lygon Street Festa:

The Spoleto Festival emerged from the success of the Lygon Street Festa. This street festa, initiated in 1978 by the Italian retailers of Lygon Street, celebrated Italian cultural identity and the contribution of Italian migrants to the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton.

The Lygon Street Festa became the cultural hub for expressions of all things Italian. It drew the widely dispersed Italian community back to Lygon Street where the earliest Italians settled after migrating. Lygon Street Carlton was known as Little Italy and was gaining popularity amongst young Italian Australians, especially those studying at the nearby Melbourne University and RMIT.

The Lygon Street Festa was the first large scale street festival celebrating a cultural-specific community in Australia.Taking place annually in October, the Lygon Street Festa became one of the most popular street festivals in Melbourne, after Moomba. Unlike Moomba, the Lygon Street Festa permitted food vendors to prepare and sell food from street stalls and attracted Italian social clubs to sell speciality products, like porcetta, prosciutto and gelato.

Key Italian attractions were scheduled into a two day weekend program, such as the highly popular and competitive greasy pole competition, the barrista coffee race, the spaghetti eating competition, and celebrity and community entertainers who performed on centre stage.

Despite the establishment of a formalised Italian cultural festival which platformed the formal 'highbrow' arts, the Lygon Street Festa continued to be held in Lygon Street by the Lygon St Traders Association. This changed in recent years when, due to a rationalisation of funds, and the increasing risks and costs in holding outside festivals, the City of Melbourne (who fund the event), saw it necessary to ensure its sustainablity by awarding the funds to new festival organiser, CO.AS.IT. The festival was renamed the Italian Festival of Carlton.