Teatro Ditirammu

Teatro Ditirammu is a non-profit organization with the aim of researching, studying, and promoting Sicilian musical traditions through performances in Italy and abroad and through initiatives that promote their dissemination, such as seminars, publications, educational and workshop activities, and the creation of courses for young people. The Association's flagship company is the Ditirammu Folk Singing Company (derived from the term dithyramb: an ancient Greek recitative technique praising the god Bacchus and wine). Its origins date back to the ancient folk singing group founded in the 1930s by Giovanni Varvaro (a researcher and guitarist, friscaletto, and jew's harp) and Maestro Carmelo Gioacchino, both passionate researchers and teachers, who also founded the renowned Coro della Conca d'Oro, which ideally continued the studies of Giuseppe Pitrè and the ethnomusicologist Alberto Favara. Giovanni Varvaro and Irene D'Onufrio, Vito Parrinello's uncle and mother, respectively, and members of the Coro della Conca d'Oro (which also included Rosa Mistretta), later involved their children, grandchildren, and students in their research and through their musicality, instilling in them the interpretation of Sicilian folk sentiment.