Montreal covered in red, white and green with ItalfestMTL

Throughout most of this month, Montreal will be covered in the red, white and green of Italy with the annual ItalfestMTL (formerly known as Montreal’s Italian Week), which is being presented by Mastro and San Daniele as a cornucopia of everything Italian when it comes to art, culture, history and especially food.

The festivities were formally announced at a press conference that took place on August 3, and its programming will be a hybrid of in-person and virtual presentations.

ItalfestMTL highlights include concert nights starring a number of singers such as Daniela Fiorentino and Brigitte Pace (August 13), Anna Liani (August 19) and Marco Bocchicchio and Manny Blu (August 20); a performance of the classic Italian opera “Rigoletto” (August 22); a fashion show featuring the works of a number of Italian-Canadian designers (August 21); stand-up comedy shows featuring popular Italian Montreal comics Franco Taddeo (August 11), Guido Grasso (August 18) and Joe Cacchione (August 19); culinary capsule presentations featuring three chefs who will cook their favorite Italian recipes (August 8, 15 and 22); for the kids, there’s storytime in Italian with Sara Ottoboni and actor Tina Mancini (August 7, 14, and 21); a virtual exhibition called “A riveder le stelle. Dante Istoriato” that celebrates the 700^th anniversary of the birth of Italian author Dante Alighieri and makes his most famous work “The Divine Comedy” more accessible to the general public (August 6-22).