Ten musicians from the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra are packing their instruments for a trip the ensemble has never made in its 81-year history: an international performance. On November 7, they will join Florence’s Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino inside the Basilica of Santa Croce to perform Mozart’s Requiem, marking the orchestra’s first-ever concert outside the United States.
The performance, reported by the Brown Daily Herald, will serve as the grand finale of the Rising from the Arno festival, which commemorates 60 years of art, resilience and stewardship in Florence. The festival is part of the broader Splendor of Florence initiative, which aims to preserve Florence’s heritage and runs from November 1 through November 8, according to rimonthly.com. The timing is no accident: this year marks the 60th anniversary of the devastating 1966 Arno River flood that inundated Florence and left much of the city’s art in ruins.
That flood, which struck on November 4, 1966, after 19 inches of rain fell over more than 24 hours, drew an international rescue effort led by the Angeli del Fango, or Mud Angels — thousands of young American volunteers who helped restore Florence’s cultural heritage, as detailed by GoLocalProv. Providence has its own flood history to draw on: the Brown Daily Herald’s reporting notes the city experienced serious flooding after Hurricane Carol struck in 1954. Providence and Florence signed a friendship pact that year the Brown Daily Herald dates to 1998, though rimonthly.com describes the festival itself as beginning in 1999 as a celebration of that Providence-Florence friendship.
A Partnership Years in the Making
According to the Brown Daily Herald, planning for the concert began before Music Director Ruth Reinhardt joined the orchestra two years earlier. David Beauchesne, executive director at the Rhode Island Philharmonic and Music School, has spent five years working with the Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino’s artistic team to organize concerts in both Florence and Providence, the Brown Daily Herald reports. He led the concert’s artistic direction alongside the Accademia.
Beauchesne called the trip an opportunity for Providence to return the favor, according to the Brown Daily Herald’s account. He said the concert will reinforce cultural connections between Florence and Providence while remembering flood victims and the restoration collaboration that followed. The two cities’ musicians have crossed paths before: singers from the Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino joined the Rhode Island Philharmonic for the Sott’Acqua festival at Grace Episcopal Church in Providence in 2023, and the 2024 Splendor of Florence events included another Rhode Island Philharmonic concert at Grace Church with guest opera singers from the Accademia, per rimonthly.com.
Training Ground for Rising Talent
The Accademia del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra is described in the Brown Daily Herald’s reporting as an elite training center for young and emerging artists in Florence. The ensemble was established to offer an artistic residency program providing professional training for orchestral musicians, particularly in operatic practice, according to maggiofiorentino.com, and its residency is open to young instrumentalists from Italy and abroad. The ensemble made its debut in summer 2025 with a touring production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and its 2026 engagements include symphonic-vocal concerts and four opera productions, per the same source.
Katherine Winterstein, a Brown teaching associate and the Rhode Island Philharmonic’s associate concertmaster, has worked with the orchestra for nearly 30 years and is learning Italian in preparation for the trip, the Brown Daily Herald reports. She said the Florence trip may raise the orchestra’s profile. Winterstein also described the orchestra under Reinhardt as collaborative, saying the ensemble felt it was working with Reinhardt rather than for her.
New Leadership, New Horizons
Reinhardt, who will conduct the November performance, joined the Rhode Island Philharmonic as its new music director during the 2025-26 season and is a German conductor based in Switzerland, according to the Brown Daily Herald. For the first time in the orchestra’s 81-year history, its music director and chief conductor is a woman, as rimonthly.com reports. The 2026/27 season marks her second as music director, according to riphil.org.
David Rogers, director of artistic operations at the Rhode Island Philharmonic and Music School, described the orchestra’s last decade as challenging because of the pandemic and a lack of steady leadership, the Brown Daily Herald reports. He will oversee orchestra production for the Florence trip and work directly with musicians to manage their logistical needs, including planning travel documents.
A Borrowed Instrument for a Demanding Score
Mozart’s Requiem requires a basset horn, an instrument not every orchestra keeps on hand. For this performance, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will lend a basset horn to the Rhode Island Philharmonic, according to the Brown Daily Herald’s reporting. Rogers said music links people worldwide and that such connections last a lifetime, per the same account.
The November 7 concert inside the Basilica of Santa Croce will close out a festival built around shared history as much as shared music. Splendor of Florence describes itself as a dual-city initiative connecting Providence and Florence through climate action, shared flood histories and urban water stewardship, according to splendorofflorence.com. For ten musicians from Rhode Island, the trip to Italy will be a first — one grounded in a friendship, and a flood, 60 years in the making.
