Providence-Founded Splendor of Florence Festival is Heading to Italy
Members of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will perform internationally for the first time in Florence for the festival that commemorates the 1966 flooding of the Arno River.
The 2024 Splendor of Florence concert was held at Grace Church and featured the RI Philharmonic and opera singers from the Academy of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
Splendor of Florence is crossing the pond to Italy for the first time in more than twenty-six years since its founding. The festival that began in 1999 as a celebration of the friendship between two Renaissance cities, Providence and Florence, is heading to Florence November 1-8 for Splendor of Florence: Rising from the Arno.
Founded in 1999 by Joyce Acciaioli Rudge – a Rhode Island native of Italian heritage who lived in Italy during her early adulthood – the festival delivered a dose of authentic Italian culture to Providence to incite support for local artists in the Creative Capital. Acciaioli Rudge wanted to prove that artists are enabled to create priceless artwork when they aren’t impeded by financial barriers.
Joyce Acciaioli Rudge, founder of Splendor of Florence.
“My grandparents were all Italian. My grandfathers were artisans, so I was spending a lot of time in Italy, and I always wanted to bring something here to honor my grandparents,” Acciaioli Rudge says. “At the time, there was an article in the newspaper about how [former Providence mayor Buddy] Cianci was trying to get artists to live downtown, rent free or tax free. So I wrote a letter to the editor of the Providence Journal. The name of the article was ‘Don’t Block Cianci’s Vision,’ and I related it to what the Medicis did in Florence during the time of the Renaissance. If the Medicis had not allowed all the artists and artisans to come into the city and work for nothing, it wouldn’t be what it is today.”
After the letter ran, Cianci called Acciaioli Rudge. “He said, ‘why don’t you bring something from Florence here. We’re the Renaissance city, and you should bring the original Renaissance city here.’ So that’s how it began,” she says.
The original Splendor of Florence became a celebration of Italian artisans, artists, musicians, food and more. It included the loaning of several paintings from Florence’s Uffizi Gallery to display at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, something the museum had never allowed before.
The paintings that were on loan from the Uffizi Gallery for the inaugural Splendor of Florence Festival.
“We had chefs and concerts and artisans and Uffizi paintings,” Acciaioli Rudge says. “It completely transformed downtown.”
After the inaugural festival held in Providence, Splendor of Florence continued on to both Philadelphia in 2001 and in Manhattan in 2004, where it grew even larger with the loaning of additional paintings by the Uffizi Gallery.
But it wasn’t until 2024 that Splendor of Florence returned to Providence.
The theme of the revival was “Sott’Acqua: A Tale of Two Cities,” which drew comparison between two devastating floods that affected both Florence, Italy, and Providence, Rhode Island. It revolved around an exhibit that included Life magazine photographs taken by David Lee in 1966 that documented the flooding of the Arno River in Florence, which damaged precious artwork, as well as archived photos from the Providence Journal that captured the flooding of downtown Providence after Hurricane Carol in 1954, displayed at Grace Episcopal Church in Providence.
The photo exhibit for “Sott’Acqua: A Tale of Two Cities.”
The 2024 events also included a lecture, panel discussion and a concert by the Rhode Island Philharmonic at Grace Church with guest opera singers from Florence’s Academia Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
The Providence concert at Grace Church.
This year’s Splendor of Florence: Rising from the Arno will officially commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the 1966 flood in Florence. As part of the festival, members of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will travel to Florence to perform Mozart’s Requiem with the Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino at the Basilica of Santa Croce, one Italy’s most significant churches that was also damaged during the 1966 flood.
The international exchange continues furthering the two cities’ relationship as Renaissance and sister cities. “People in Rhode Island have understood how important it is to partner with a city like Florence,” Acciaioli Rudge says. “The Philharmonic has never played outside of the country, and it’s the first time they’re performing internationally. They’re going to be on an international stage and Florence is a number one tourist spot. In November, there are still a lot of tourists that are going to be there, and they’re going to see Providence in Florence, which I think is important.”
Local schoolchildren visited the photography exhibit in downtown Providence for the 2024 Splendor of Florence that commemorated the seventieth anniversary of Hurricane Carol.
This year, Lee’s famous Life photographs will also travel to Florence to be shared in the sister city for several free events. The Splendor of Florence: Rising from the Arno events also include additional concerts, special tours of restoration projects and cultural institutions, a roundtable with Rhode Island and Florentine business leaders, and Solidarity Without Borders, a program with the University of Florence exploring restoration, flood mitigation, and the legacy of the “Mud Angels” who helped save Florence’s cultural treasures in 1966 by stepping in to rescue items during the flood.
“People don’t understand how old this is, how much we’ve been doing, and why it’s so important for Florence. We should be so happy that we have this relationship with Florence,” Acciaioli Rudge says. “It’s the Renaissance capital of the world. And for them to want to partner with Providence is amazing.”
