The Teatro La Fenice has announced that the Premio Una vita nella musica 2021 will take place on Oct. 28, 2021.

The ceremony will pay tribute to distinguished Music Critic Mario Messinis, who passed away in September 2020.

The program will take place at the Campo San Fantin with the chorus and the instrumentalists of the Teatro La Fenice directed by Claudio Marino Moretti. The program will include two selections that Messinis loved: “Queen Mary” from Henry Purcell and “Les Noces” by Igor Stravinskij.

Messinis was selected in 2020 to receive the honor but the ceremony was canceled due to the pandemic. The award is one of the most prestigious prizes in Venice.

Fortunato Ortombina, Superintendant and Artistic Director of the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice noted that the reason Messinis was selected was due to his love for music and his dedication to the art form throughout his life. He will become the first posthumous awardee and will become the first nonperformer to receive the honor.

Messinis worked as a critic for the Gazzettino from 1965 to 2002 and was a professor of Music History at the Conservatorio di Venezia. He was also the Artistic Director of la Biennale Musica di Venezia, The Artistic Director and Superintendent of La Fenice as well as the Orchestre della Rai di Torino, di Milano, for the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, and the Bologna Festival.

Messinis will join such distinguished musicians as Arthur Rubinstein, Andrés Segovia, Karl Böhm, Carlo Maria Giulini, Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovič, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Franco Ferrara, Nathan Milstein, Leonard Bernstein e Francesco Siciliani, Nikita Magaloff, Isaac Stern, Maurizio Pollini, Raina Kabaivanska, Luca Ronconi, Salvatore Accardo, Claudio Abbado, Carla Fracci e Renzo Piano, Ruggero Raimondi, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Zubin Mehta, Alfred Brendel, Claudio Scimone, Daniel Barenboim, Carlo Bergonzi, Gidon Kremer, Aldo Ciccolini, Myung-Whun Chung, Salvatore Sciarrino, Yuri Temirkanov, Sir Jeffrey Tate, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Mariella Devia, and Riccardo Chailly in receiving the award.

The committee, which includes Oreste Bossini, Massimo Contiero, Andrea Estero, Gian Paolo Minardi, Giorgio Pestelli, and Francesca Valente, also announced that this year the award for Premio Una vita nella musica Giovani will be given to musicologist Elena Oliva, Gabriele Strata, and composer Zeno Baldi.