After opening the Meridiano festival in Tuscany on March 27th, Dubrovnik artist Ivana Marija Vidovic held a poetic piano recital in Rome on March 29th 2011, which was her first introduction to the Roman public.

The recital, which included a presentation of the Ivana’s newest bilingual edition of "The Life of Flowers" published by the prominent Italian publishing house Akkuaria, took place at the headquarters of the Umanitaria Società di Roma.

The concert was attended by leaders of the Croatian Embassy in Italy: Tomislav Vidosevic, Croatian Ambassador to Italy along with his delegation, and Philip Vučak, the new Croatian Representative to the Holy See. This was Mr. Vučak’s first public event since his appointment in Rome.

In a press release for Italian media, the president of Akkuaria, Vera Ambra said that the concert of the Croatian artist will remain in their memory for a long time. “…The concert was a renewed opportunity to reaffirm our excellent cooperation with a multitalented artist of great international repute, whom Akkuaria honored in May 2010 with the title of Ambassador of Italian culture in Croatia. Very early on, Ivana Marija Vidovic began to talk about herself and her sensibilities, through her profession, music, but also through literary expression. She manages to play the piano, thinking of words, and relinquishing herself to rich imagination.  Likewise, when she writes words, she is thinking about music notes. Her dialogue with the flowers is great! It opens us up to completely new and unexpected doors of still unknown symbolism, invisible even to most sensitive observers. In her written expression, there is a musicality, and in her musical expression, poetic narration. Ivana, like Dora Pejacevic, says that the flowers and nature are great teachers of those who are able to notice them. I had not experienced that sentences and syntaxes have a clef, musical notation, rhythm and such a wide range of tones..."

The main protagonists of the evening were Mrs Vidovic and Italian actor Giovanni Carta, who fantastically interpreted Ivana’s words. At the end, the actor was joined by the author herself who recited one poem in Italian and in her own Croatian language. The actor, Mr. Carta recently played the role of Carlo Ponti, Sophia Loren's husband in a biographical movie, in which she played herself as the great Italian movie star, Sofia Loren herself.

Alongside the two active protagonists there was the strongly felt presence of the person to whom this collection of poems is dedicated, and the inspiration of the book.

We are speaking about Dora Pejačević whose musical "The Life of Flowers" op.19 was first performed in its entirety in Rome, as well as Franz Liszt, whose works brilliantly concluded this impressive performance celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Written by Vera Ambra