ROME (AP) — Instruments made from smugglers’ boats that brought migrants to Italy’s shores told their tale of desperation and redemption in a special performance at a prison in Milan on Saturday, in front of the inmates who made them.
World-renowned Italian conductor Riccardo Muti led the Cherubini Youth Orchestra, whose members played on violins, violas and cellos distinguishable by the faded blue, green and yellow paint of salvaged wood.
“These instruments are made from the tragic wood of these boats that were trying to bring people to safety and democracy,” Muti explained to an audience of inmates and guests at the Opera prison, the largest in Italy.
The makers who created these unique instruments are taking part in a project — dubbed Metamorphosis — that focuses on transforming what otherwise might be discarded into something of value to society: rotten wood into fine instruments, inmates into craftsmen, all under the principle of rehabilitation.
“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,” Muti said after the performance.
The Opera prison on Milan’s southern edge has over 1,400 inmates, including 101 mafiosi held under a strict regime of near-total isolation.
The boats arrived at Opera after being seized, some still containing remnants of the migrants’ belongings, and with them a reminder of the tens of thousands of migrants that the U.N. says have died or gone missing on the perilous central Mediterranean crossing between Africa and Europe since 2014.
On Saturday the orchestra performed pieces from Italian composers Antonio Vivaldi and Giuseppe Verdi and 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 masterpiece “Nabucco.”
This image, distributed on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, by Casa Fondazione Dello Spirito e delle Arti, shows conductor Riccardo Muti being cheered by inmates at Opera Prison in Milan, northern Italy, on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, after performing inside the prison with the Orchestra del Mare using musical instruments made from the timber of sunken migrant ships. (Marco Borrelli/Casa Fondazione Dello Spirito e delle Arti via AP, HO)
This image, distributed on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, by Casa Fondazione Dello Spirito e delle Arti, shows conductor Riccardo Muti performing with the Orchestra del Mare using musical instruments made from the timber of sunken migrant ships inside the Opera Prison in Milan, northern Italy, on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026. (Marco Borrelli/Casa Fondazione Dello Spirito e delle Arti via AP, HO)
JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — With just a few hundred people in the community, it was never particularly easy being Jewish in Mississippi's capital city, but members of Beth Israel Congregation took a special pride in keeping their traditions alive in the heart of the Deep South.
An arson fire over the weekend that badly damaged the historic synagogue's library and administrative offices made it much harder and harkened back to an era more than a half-century earlier when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Jackson, Mississippi, synagogue because of its rabbi's support for civil rights.
Authorities early Monday hadn't publicly named a suspect, who was in custody, but the FBI promised to release more information later in the day. Yellow police tape on Monday blocked off the entrances to the synagogue building, which was surrounded by broken glass and soot. Bouquets of flowers were laid on the ground at the building's entrance — including one with a note that said, “I'm so very sorry.”
The congregation's president, Zach Shemper, vowed to rebuild the synagogue and said several churches had offered their spaces for worship during the rebuilding process.
“As Jackson’s only synagogue, Beth Israel is a beloved institution, and it is the fellowship of our neighbors and extended community that will see us through,” Shemper said.
With the exception of the cemetery, every aspect of Jewish life in Jackson was under Beth Israel's roof. The midcentury modern building not only housed the congregation but also the Jewish Federation, a nonprofit provider of social services and philanthropy that is the hub of Jewish institutional life in most U.S. cities. The building also was home to the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, which provides resources to Jewish communities in 13 southern states. A Holocaust memorial was outdoors behind the synagogue building.
Because Jewish children throughout the South have attended summer camp for decades in Utica, Mississippi, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Jackson, many retain a fond connection to the state and its Jewish community.
“Jackson is the capital city, and that synagogue is the capital synagogue in Mississippi,” said Rabbi Gary Zola, a historian of American Jewry who taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. “I would call it the flagship, though when we talk about places like New York and Los Angeles, it probably seems like Hicksville.”
The congregation was so committed to maintaining Jewish life in Jackson that, when its fulltime rabbi departed recently, congregants decided to pay for the multiyear rabbinic schooling of its cantorial soloist, Benjamin Russell, so that Beth Israel could maintain a fulltime, seminary-trained religious leader.
Because of the tiny size of Jackson's Jewish community, many congregants had interfaith marriages but still regularly attended Friday night services with their spouses in a commitment to their faith.
Beth Israel as a congregation was founded in 1860 and acquired its first property where it built Mississippi's first synagogue after the Civil War. In 1967, the synagogue moved to its current location where it was bombed by local Ku Klux Klan members not long after relocating. Two months after that, the home of the synagogue's leader, Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, was bombed because of his outspoken opposition to segregation and racism.
At a time when opposition to racial segregation could be dangerous in the Deep South, many Beth Israel congregants hoped the rabbi would just stay quiet, but Nussbaum was unshakable in believing he was doing the right thing by supporting civil rights, Zola said.
“He had this strong, strong sense of justice,” Zola said. “He was incapable of going along to get along.”
This weekend's fire ripped through the Beth Israel Congregation shortly after 3 a.m. on Saturday, authorities said. No congregants or firefighters were injured in the blaze. Firefighters arrived to find flames billowing out of windows and all doors to the synagogue locked, according to the fire department.
One Torah that survived the Holocaust was behind glass and was not damaged in the fire, according to the congregation. Five Torahs — the sacred scrolls with the text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — located inside the sanctuary were being assessed for smoke damage. Two Torahs inside the library, where the most severe damage was done, were destroyed, according to a synagogue representative.
Schneider reported from Orlando, Fla. Follow him on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social
FILE - This Nov. 2, 2018 photo shows an armed Hinds County Sheriff's deputy outside of the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, file)
