Milan prison hosts concert using instruments made from migrant-smuggler boats

In Milan, Italian conductor Riccardo Muti led a prison concert on Saturday featuring instruments made from wood salvaged from migrant smuggling boats that brought people to Italy’s shores, AP reported.

The performance took place at the Opera prison on Milan’s southern edge, described by AP as the largest prison in Italy and located near the city. Muti led the Cherubini Youth Orchestra as inmates and guests listened to the music.

AP said the orchestra members played violins, violas and cellos made from salvaged wood, with the instruments identifiable by the faded blue, green and yellow paint.

Muti told the audience of inmates and guests that, “These instruments are made from the tragic wood of these boats that were trying to bring people to safety and democracy,” according to AP.

AP described the concert as part of a project dubbed “Metamorphosis,” which it said focuses on transforming what otherwise might be discarded into something of value to society. The project, AP reported, is meant to turn rotten wood into fine instruments and inmates into craftsmen under a rehabilitation principle.

After the performance, Muti said, “Hearing these people, who are here serving their sentences, but who seem so serene and so clearly and openly eager to find a sense of harmony in their lives through music … has been an enrichment of my experience as a musician and as a man,” AP reported.

AP said Opera prison has over 1,400 inmates, including 101 mafiosi held under a strict regime of near-total isolation.

The report said the boats arrived at Opera after being seized, and that some still contained remnants of migrants’ belongings. AP also described the seized boats as a reminder of the tens of thousands of migrants the United Nations says have died or gone missing on the perilous central Mediterranean crossing between Africa and Europe since 2014.

On Saturday, AP said the orchestra performed pieces from Italian composers Antonio Vivaldi and Giuseppe Verdi. A chorus with singers from another Milan prison, San Vittore, joined for a rendition of “Va’ Pensiero,” also known as “The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves,” from Verdi’s “Nabucco.”