Some other great reasons to come to Udine: the national soccer team!

A few weeks ago Udine’s Stadio Friuli was host to the Italian (men’s) national soccer team for its qualifying match against tiny Georgia for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa (Italy won 2-0). The team’s training camp was about 30 kms from Udine, in Gradisca di Isonzo. Some pics include head coach Marcello Lippi, goalkeeper (the so-called “best in the world”) Gigi Buffon, team captain Fabio Cannavaro, Luca Toni, Vincenzo Iaquinta, the team’s “pit-bull”, Gennaro Gattuso, the great Alex Del Piero and the other members of the 2006 World Cup championship team (all pics by M. Rimati).

What a great concert scene too!

So what to say about the concert scene in Udine? Well, actually not bad. You’ve got something pretty well for every musical taste, from Gaelic to hard rock music and nearly everything in between. Here’s just an example of some of the great shows that have rolled into the Udine area for 2008:

-Guitar legend John McLaughlin at the Giovanni da Udine theatre in Udine;

-Canada’s Loreena McKennitt in Udine’s splendid castle (a very nice venue for concerts which has seen in the past the likes of B.B. King, John Mayall, The Blues Brothers Band, Patti Smith and Van Morrison). A nice little concert as we both hail from the same Canadian province, Manitoba!;

-Paul Simon of former Simon & Garfunkel fame, Udine’s castle;

-Mark Knopfler of former Dire Straits fame at the splendid Villa Manin, located about 15 kms from Udine (Villa Manin is a Venetian-style villa. It was the last residence of the Venetian doge, Ludovico Manin. It also hosted for just one night between August 27 and 28, 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine Beauharnais. It’s also in this very same villa that a treaty known as the “Trattato di Campoformio” was signed between France and Austria on October 17, 1797. Currently, the villa is home to a contemporary art centre);

-Guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani, Villa Manin;

-R.E.M, Villa Manin;

-Dionne Warwick at the beachside resort of Lignano (which was once called by Ernest Hemingway as the “Florida of Italy”!);

-Zucchero at the elegant beachside resort of Grado;

-Macy Gray in Tarvisio (a town located about 90 kms from Udine, right next to the Austrian border);

-Italy’s Gianna Nannini, Villa Manin (sister of Alessandro Nannini who once used to race in Formula 1);

-Vasco Rossi in Udine’s Friuli soccer stadium (perhaps the closest you can get to an Italian version of Bruce Springsteen! Rossi ALWAYS manages to pack them in whenever he plays around Italy);

-The rock opera "Notre Dame de Paris" at Villa Manin.

And some of these great concerts have come to us also thanks to Italian promoters such Azalea (www.azalea.it), Euritmica (http://www.euritmica.it/), Folkest (http://www.folkest.com/) and No Borders Music Festival
(http://www.nobordersmusicfestival.com/).

My only hope now that AC/DC has come out with their new album, “Black Ice”, is that these same promoters will ALSO bring them to the Friuli stadium. Pandemonium guaranteed (all pics by M. Rimati)!!!