Italian
A commemorative event with the Elisabeth University of Music choir to celebrate the bond between the two cities and relaunch a message of global peace
VENICE – The city of Venice commemorated the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima with a concert for peace held by the Elisabeth University of Music choir from the Japanese city. The event took place on the afternoon of Monday, August 4, in the Sala San Leonardo in Cannaregio, a location chosen for its strong symbolic significance and evocative atmosphere.
The event is part of the process initiated with the friendship pact signed in 2023 between Venice and Hiroshima at Ca’ Farsetti. To strengthen this bond, an official letter from the mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, was delivered to the City of Venice before the concert. It was read at the opening by the director of the International Policy Department, Dennis Wellington, in the presence of the president of the Municipality of Venice Murano Burano, Marco Borghi, municipal councilors, and many citizens.
“I express my deep gratitude for your support for world peace initiatives,” Matsui wrote to Mayor Luigi Brugnaro. Recalling Venice’s membership in the Mayors for Peace association, founded by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to promote nuclear disarmament, the Japanese mayor emphasized the universal value of music as an instrument of peace. “With its power to overcome linguistic and cultural differences,” he wrote, “music is the embodiment of the culture of peace. Events like this strengthen mutual understanding between peoples.”
These words were echoed with conviction by Mayor Brugnaro, who described the concert as “an opportunity to renew the friendship pact between our cities and to reaffirm that peace is also built through culture and art. The bond between Venice and Hiroshima,” he added, “is living proof that dialogue between different peoples is not only possible but necessary. In an increasingly unstable world, we must be promoters of respect and freedom.” Brugnaro also recalled the intensification of relations with Japan, from the Italian Pavilion at the Osaka Expo to the honor he received, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette.
The concert opened with a minute’s silence in memory of the two victims of the accident at work that had occurred a few hours earlier in Santa Maria di Sala. The choir then performed a repertoire ranging from Gregorian chants to contemporary choral arrangements, including prayers for peace and pieces dedicated to the victims of the bombing. The Elisabeth University itself, now an established musical institution, was founded in the post-war period as a small cultural workshop in response to the trauma of the atomic bomb.
On the occasion of the event, a photographic exhibition dedicated to the bombing of August 6, 1945, was also inaugurated in the Sala San Leonardo, reinforcing the collective memory and the message of disarmament and brotherhood that unites Venice and Hiroshima today.
