by the Melos Chorus
An orchestra no conservatory ever trained, one that re-forms itself in every city. Fourteen years after the first time, it returns to the city where it was born.
March 2012. The Teatro Valle, the Roman theatre founded in 1727, has been occupied for nine months. An invitation signed by Giovanni Sollima and Enrico Melozzi circulates online: anyone who plays the cello, come to the Valle. About a hundred show up. Three days of rehearsals, experiments and improvisations follow, during which the project finds its character, and on the evening of 18 March the concert fills the theatre to the last seat.
Since that night the 100 Cellos have taken to the road. Theatres and squares all over Italy, then Europe and the rest of the world, with concerts almost always sold out. The photographs in the ensemble’s archive are an atlas: Madrid, Tokyo, the Teatro Antico in Taormina, the Sferisterio in Macerata, Ravenna, Spoleto, Palermo. In September 2024 they were in Piazza San Carlo in Turin for MITO SettembreMusica, in July 2026 in the hypogeum of Teramo, and on 16 October they opened the season at the Teatro Verdi in Pordenone.
At the first desk may sit a soloist with a career, at the last a student, and in between someone who took the instrument back out of the cupboard.
The rule of the Valle has never changed. The 100 Cellos remain an open orchestra: professionals, soloists, students, amateurs, enthusiasts. There is a core of historic cellists, and in every city new ones join, called through a public call. Beyond the concert, the ensemble enters the life of the host city with flash mobs and incursions through streets and squares. The repertoire crosses all eras, with arrangements and compositions by Sollima and Melozzi, who share the podium and swap the roles of soloist and conductor.
On stage with the hundred cellos, over these years, have stood Premiata Forneria Marconi, Sarah Jane Morris, Marco Mengoni, Alessandro Baricco, Stefania Rocca, Valeria Solarino, Ernst Reijseger, Rushad Eggleston, Elsa Lila, the Voci della Notte della Taranta, Michael Riessler, Peppe Vessicchio. A list that says by itself how wide the perimeter of this project is.
On Sunday 15 November, at 11:30 am, the 100 Cellos open the day of the Classical Rave Party.
The day that closes Romaeuropa Festival 2026 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone begins with them. In the morning the hundred cellos, in the afternoon the music of Philip Glass, in the evening the Orchestra Notturna Clandestina in the Sala Santa Cecilia with Giovanni Sollima, Niccolò Fabi, Alessandro Baricco and the Italian Army Band. For those who have followed the 100 Cellos from the Valle onward it is a homecoming: the city where everything began, and the institution, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, where Sollima has taught since 2010.
Information and tickets at romaeuropa.net.