Italian Opera Chosen for UNESCO Cultural Heritage List
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In 2011, Italian opera singers created the organization Cantori Professionisti D’Italia (Professional Singers of Italy) gathering opera artists to spread awareness of opera music and theater as an important landmark in Italian Culture. After twelve years, the organization succeeded. In December 2023, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced that Italian opera singing now belonged UNESCO’s intangible heritage list.
“After a long and well-structured effort, one of our nation’s important merits obtains yet another recognition from UNESCO, as it now belongs to the intangible heritage list. This is about an official consecration that we already knew about: Italian Opera is a global landmark, among those that best represent us in the world.” Stated Italy’s Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano.
Representing the United Nations’s 181 member states – who favored Italian opera’s nomination to the list during the Committee of Botswana, 24 member approved lyric opera, melodrama, singing recitals, and bel canto as new additions to the intangible heritage list. Said representing states included Angola, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Czech Repulic, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Malesia, Mauritania, Marocco, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Sweeden, Switzerland, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Recognizing and promoting diversity of cultural practices, the list of cultural and intangible heritage of humanity houses 567 practices from 136 countries and 5 geographic regions.
-Diego Maldonado
