One of the leading pianists and conductors of our age, Daniel Barenboim is returning to the Principality this March to play at the iconic Opéra de Monte-Carlo, some 50 years since his first appearance here in the 1970s.
Barenboim has a story to tell about his friendship with the new director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Cecilia Bartoli.
“I have known Cecilia for many, many years and admired her from the beginning,” says the 80-year-old pianist and conductor, who has worked all over the world. “It is common knowledge that my wife pulled me out of the bath to go and watch this fascinating young Italian mezzo-soprano who was replacing someone in a Maria Callas Gala on French television. I particularly love her marvellous voice, her spontaneity and her sense of humour.”
He will no doubt be looking forward to reuniting with Bartoli on 10th March for his one-off performance in Monaco, where he is set to perform Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas.
Tickets have already sold out for his night at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, but keen fans can discover more about this globally recognised – and appreciated – artist here.
Maserati Monaco Sports Group (MSG) Racing’s struggles continued in Cape Town on Saturday, with both drivers forced to retire from the race, despite improvements in performance.
MSG’s improvements in performance have been incremental but discernable in recent races. Having had the pace to challenge for the title last season, the Monaco team found themselves relegated to the lower mid-table at the start of this Gen3 era.
However, it seemed that MSG were ready to challenge in Cape Town, South Africa on Saturday. Edoardo Mortara had pace but put his car in the wall towards the end of qualifying, leaving the team in a race against time to reconstruct his car before the race.
Maximilian Günther fared much better, and worked his way into the pole position shoot-out. Ultimately, the German driver started second on the grid, whilst Mortara would start from the pits.
High hopes, but ultimately disappointment
Mortara would start the match, but he wouldn’t get far, the Swiss driver’s machinery broke down on him early on, leaving Günther as the only MSG driver left in the race.
Günther was involved in an exciting battle with Sacha Fenestraz, and at one point led the race. However, he ceded his position on lap 14. The German was still in line for a podium, but he then clipped the wall on lap 21, sustaining suspension damage, and being forced to retire. Neither MSG car, therefore, finished the race.
“Season 9 hasn’t been the easiest of starts, but after showing great pace in practice and making it into the final duel in qualifying here in Cape Town, we had some high hopes for the race. It’s disappointing not to see those hopes realised,” said MSG team principal James Rossiter post-race.
The grid next heads to São Paulo on 24th March where MSG will be hoping that their lofty aspirations are converted into points.
A new five-star hotel featuring 60 high-end residences will be built on the Ventimiglia waterfront overlooking the marina as part of the Italian city’s port redevelopment strategy.
Marina Development Corporation (MDC) this week presented the final layout of Borgo del Forte. It is the flagship operation of Marina di Ventimiglia, an urban regeneration project to create a new tourist destination on the seafront of the city on the western Ligurian coast, with an international reach but with an Italian vocation.
The Borgo del Forte residential-hotel complex will consist of a five-star hotel with 70 rooms, while the residential component will include 60 high-end apartments with terraces overlooking the city’s tourist port, with the possibility of entrusting management to the hotel structure.
Due to a reduction of the overall volumes compared to the original project, over 9,000 cubic metres less, the 70-room hotel will be built in a more exclusive space and totally surrounded by greenery, completing the tourist offer of the recently redeveloped port area. According to MDC, several Italian and international brands have already expressed interest in managing the facility.
“In the last two years, a great deal of dialogue has been done with local and regional authorities aimed at continuous improvement of the project, mainly with respect to landscape-environmental and hydrogeological issues,” says Giuseppe Noto, CEO of MDC.
“The new layout reflects these intense interactions by combining the naturalistic aspects typical of the Ligurian landscape, the charm of the upper city with the new port and the innate elegance of Italian design through the creation of a new destination capable of responding to the needs of the modern tourist. Borgo del Forte contributes to the urban regeneration of Ventimiglia across the board, recovering abandoned areas such as the waterfront and Campasso for virtuous uses such as tourism, sport and education for the benefit of the territory, citizens and employment.”
The future restaurant La Rocca in Ventimiglia, overlooking the marina. Photo source: MDC
The €200 million new development project surrounding Ventimiglia marina
The redevelopment of the waterfront is part of a wider regeneration program of the Ventimiglia marina which will involve a total area of 57,000 m2. The project, which envisages a total investment of €200 million by the BDF fund, managed by Namira sgr and of which MDC is advisor, also includes the construction of the La Rocca restaurant to the west of the residential-hotel complex, with works started in October 2022, and Club Italia, which will transform Piazza Costituente into a new restaurant scene.
Meanwhile, Borgo del Forte Campus will be built in the former Campasso railway station, 30,000 m2 in size, behind the green area that stands at the mouth of the river Nervia. It will be a multi-purpose large international educational-sports and leisure campus for citizens and tourists, and feature an indoor swimming pool, a fully equipped gym, and tennis courts.
A multi-level building will be built next to the sports centre to house an international school.
To the south, the dissused train depot will be converted into a congress centre, with a conference room, exhibition-fair area, laboratories and offices, all overlooking a large green park.
In terms of environmental impact, Marina di Ventimiglia complies with the general objectives of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the minimum requirements for nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB), including maximum efficiency in the management of energy, water, materials, waste and the reduction of air and noise pollution.
Borgo del Forte will be an attraction for locals and a new wave of tourists. Image source: MDC
Brining new life, and money, to the city of Ventimiglia
According to MDC, the large marina regeneration project will contribute significantly to the development of the area and its social fabric. Analysis by Nomisma shows that investment in works will deliver over €540 million in benefits to the community. In addition, around 300 people will be employed in the operational phase alone.
The new marina itself, Cala del Forte, was opened in October 2020. The new port features 178 berths from 6.5 to 70 meters in length, 577 parking spaces, 15,000 m2 of promenades and gardens, and 35 businesses including restaurants, bars, offices and boat services. Meanwhile, the 2,700 m² shipyard, being run by Cantieri di Imperia, has hauling and launching capacity for yachts up to 30 metres long.
On a poor run of form, tension, discord and frustration are starting to show at AS Monaco Basketball. The Roca Team’s latest defeat came against Barcelona (80-70) on Friday.
Monaco were looking to bounce back after a shock defeat to Bourg-en-Bresse in the Leaders Cup last week. Sasa Obradovic’s men had plenty of time to prepare for the fixture, perhaps too much time, as Monaco looked rusty in the first half.
The Principality club aren’t on their richest vein of form, but they would have to conjure up a performance in the second half to avoid back-to-back defeats. Monaco shored up their defence, allowing them to go on the attack, and having prevented Barcelona from scoring for four minutes in the final quarter, they were within touching distance of their opponents (62-65).
However, it was at this point that the cracks began to show, spilling over into confrontations and arguments, notably between James and Obradovic. The American point guard lost possession twice before arguing with the coach, whilst the game continued. The American then threw the ball against the advertising boards in anger after a Barcelona hoop allowed the Spanish side to pull away once more.
Monaco lost their heads, and logically succumbed to a defeat in Catalunya (80-70), but remain in the playoff spots.
Jordan Loyd didn’t mince his words when criticising the Roca Team’s latest defeat. “There is a lot of frustration. We are going through difficult weeks. We are still learning and we lost our heads at the end; it is something that is happening every match. We’re losing our heads. We’re a good team, but we’re not mature enough,” he said post-match.
Monaco will be hoping to dispel the negative energy currently around the club with a victory against Maccabi Tel Aviv at the Salle Gaston Médecin on Thursday.
15 years of life-saving and life-changing operations were celebrated at the recent Monaco Collectif Humanitaire meet, which brought together members from across the worlds of healthcare, charity and government.
Over the past 15 years, the Monaco Collectif Humanitaire or Monaco Humanitarian Collective has been able to save 515 sick African children who may otherwise have had no chance at getting the urgent care they required.
Last year, 51 children suffering from heart diseases were looked after by the Monaco Collectif Humanitaire. Six were eventually brought to Monaco and France to receive the operations they needed, whilst the other 45 were able to stay closer to home to get their treatments.
Since 2019, the Collectif has partnered with the Chaîne de l’Espoir to expand actions in Mali, Madagascar, Senegal and Burkina Faso, and to improve local healthcare conditions to allow many children to avoid travelling to receive care. To date, 80 operations have taken place in these countries.
The meeting also gave the members in attendance a chance to discuss preparations for the 15th anniversary celebrations, which will take place in Dakar, Senegal in June. The event will be an opportunity to pay tribute to the doctors of the partner countries, local representatives and Monaco Collectif Humanitaire members as well as to gather the children whose lives were changed for the better over the past three years.
The Monaco Collectif Humanitaire members include: 16 non-governmental organisations from Monaco; three French NGOs; three health centres in Monaco, namely the Centre Cardio-Thoracique de Monaco, the Princess Grace Hospital and the Monegasque Institute of Medicine and Sports Surgery; and four health centres in Africa, including the André Festoc Cardio-Paediatric Centre in Mali, Soavinandriana Hospital Centre in Madagascar, Cuomo Cardio-Paediatric Centre in Senegal, and the University Hospital Centre in Tingandogo in Burkina Faso.
For more information on the group and its work, please click here.
Coming up is Monacollecte, an event that focuses on collecting and sorting items that are no longer wanted or needed, but could easily find a home elsewhere.
Just in time for spring cleaning, Monacollecte is back for its second edition, giving people the perfect opportunity to drop off perfectly good items they simply don’t want or know what to do with in Port Hercule over two days: 3rd and 4th March.
The goal of the day is: “To offer Monegasques the opportunity to get rid of, at a single point, all the objects that cause them problems, either because they do not know where to put them or because they do not want to throw them away because they are still in good state,” according to Marie Berard, Deputy Director of Environmental Cleanliness at the Société Monégasque d’Assainissement or Monegasque Sanitation Company, who is hosting the event.
2022’s successful event welcomed nearly 3,000 visitors and this year’s promises to be even bigger. Many local charities, such as Fight Aids Monaco, Mission Enfants, the Monegasque Red Cross, Les Amis du Liban, Semeurs d’Espoir Monaco and the Nice Foundation, will be in attendance to snap up things they can pass on, making this an event that also has a feel-good factor. A last-minute entry is the Monaco Parents’ Association, who are collecting old school clothes in good condition to be used by the next generation of children in need.
In addition to the work at hand, there will be a number of fun activities taking place, such as the performance of funny skits, playfully called Ratatouille Rhapsody by the Compagnie Ça s’peut pas, which they call a “family and participatory show that addresses food waste and seasonal and local consumption with humour and music.”There’s also an escape game based on the story of a laboratory who has developed the Dechetivore 3000; a machine capable of eliminating waste. They want to keep it secret, so players will need to use their wits to break into the lab and find the plans in under 45 minutes.
“A virtual assistant, available on the Your Monaco app, will lead the game,” Berard explains. “This is an opportunity to introduce this new app function, which has a sorting assistant.”
The popular Mùnegu Repair Café is joining in on the Saturday, giving those who have reparable items, including clothes and small appliances, a chance to get them fixed for free.
Free compost will be available to any who turns up with a container to take it home and a stand will be set up to speak about the virtues of collective and individual composting. Several other exhibits and information stands will be dotted around the port.
The event is co-organised by the Société Monégasque d’Assainissement and the Department of Urban Waste, in partnership with the town hall of Monaco. To learn more, please click here.
