Police on an Italian island stopped a party attended by Mick Jagger – because music is banned on Wednesdays.
The Rolling Stones frontman was on Stromboli, the volcanic island among Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, for the production of Three Incestuous Sisters, a film by the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher in which he stars.
Jagger, 82, was celebrating wrapping the film in a local venue on Wednesday night, along with its other stars Josh O’Connor, Jessie Buckley, Saoirse Ronan, Dakota Johnson and Isabella Rossellini, when the police attended and asked them to stop the party owing to a Wednesday music ban enacted by the mayor.
According to reports in the Italian press, the music was being played from a small speaker and at an acceptable volume. While the order caused some confusion and hilarity, the partygoers accepted it, albeit reluctantly, according to the reports.
La Repubblica said a local bookseller revealed the incident on social media, saying the party was stopped shortly before midnight after some Stromboli residents complained to police about the music.
The film crew and actors left Stromboli on Thursday, with Jagger, who plays a lighthouse keeper in the film, and Josh O’Connor’s father, leaving in a private helicopter.
Riccardo Gullo, the mayor of Lipari, which administers Stromboli and five other Aeolian islands, could not be immediately be reached for comment when contacted by the Guardian.
Rosa Oliva, the president of the Pro Loco Amo Stromboli, a grassroots association that promotes sustainable tourism and protecting Stromboli’s environment, said stopping the party was “yet another sign” the island was being “penalised in its moments of visibility” rather than being valued and supported, especially “after a winter of severe shortages and neglect”.
In a statement to the Italian press, she said: “An island of international importance such as ours deserves worthy administrative management, capable of preventing problems and encouraging dialogue among local communities, rather than resorting to belated or punitive interventions.
“From the mayor, one would have expected a welcome to the guests, or at least a greeting and a thank you for their crucial contribution to the Aeolian economy and their visibility. Our island lives off tourism.”
Jagger, who owns a home in the Sicilian province of Syracuse, arrived in Stromboli, which for weeks had been transformed into an open-air set, a few days ago, and was welcomed “with the usual island discretion”, according to SkyTG24.
Three Incestuous Sisters is based on Audrey Niffenegger’s bestselling novel of the same name.
Rohrwacher received considerable acclaim for her film Happy as Lazzaro, which won best screenplay at Cannes in 2018, and 2023 follow-up, La Chimera.