MONINI PRIZE
Una finestra sui Due Mondi
Fourth edition

Essentially it is just a window, but looking out from there is becoming a gesture which is more and more to ardently desired by artists participating in the Festival of Two Worlds. John Malkovich, Adriana Kucerova, Adriana Asti, Claudio Santamaria, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Thomas Copeland know something about this as they were able to do it in the past three years. Because to appear at that window, where Gian Carlo Menotti used to greet and contemplate his Festival, means having won "A Window on 2Worlds".

The Prize was established by the Monini family in 2010 after purchasing Casa Menotti in order to create a museum and documentation center on the Festival. Along with the residence, the Moninis wanted to bring that gesture back to life, a tradition that has never been forgotten at the Festival of Spoleto. So every year, a qualified jury selects the recipient of the prize and a "special prize": the choice falls upon a world-famous artist and a spokesman for the young talent present at the Festival to represent the future of art and the event.

Being in its fourth edition this year "The Window" (not just that of Casa Menotti, but the actual prize, which is a scale reproduction) is desired by many stars who hope to enter this selection of artists . Not only, because it is an image that will remain in our memory since the winners are immortalized at the window in a photograph, by the famous portraitist Fabian Cevallos, that will enrich the images in the gallery of the "Great Festival Artists" displayed in the rooms of the same Casa Menotti.

For the first time this year the names of the two artists called upon to make that gesture so full of meaning and to receive the honor in the 2013 edition are known in advance

The Monini Prize will be assigned on July 13 at 11 a.m. to Willem Dafoe. An Oscar candidate various times and star of cult films such as Platoon, Mississippi Burning - The Roots of Hatred, The Last Temptation of Christ, Dafoe is at the Festival with the play The Old Woman by Daniil Kharms, starring next to Baryshnikov, directed by Robert Wilson. Moreover, this is a period of intense work for him. In fact, two of his new movies are about to come out: Boot Tracks by David Jacobson, and Odd Thomas, taken from the novel by Dean Koontz. He is also engaged in Out of the Furnace by Scott Cooper and on the set of the much-rumored Nymphomaniac, directed by Lars Von Trier.

The previous day, July 12 at 11 a.m. the "special prize" will go to Matthew Aucoin, musician, composer, conductor, very young genuine music talent. At just 23 years old, Aucoin already has an enviable career: he is the youngest assistant conductor in the history of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His third Opera, which he is currently working on, was commissioned by the American Repertory Theater and the premiere will be staged next year in Boston, directed by Diane Paulus. The Spoleto audience, that met him as a pianist in Britten´s Turn of the Screw in 2012, this year will admire him as the protagonist of ten concerts at the cloister of San Nicolò.