Milan, September 11 - Milan Mayor Giuliano Pisapia on Thursday unveiled an art and concert series marking Italy's semester in the European Union presidency, which began July 1, and highlighting artists that contributed to the creation of a European identity.

"This program is an appetizer of sorts, taking us towards the opening of the Expo 2015 world's fair next year, when our city will be at the center of the world stage," Pisapia said.

"It is also our attempt to promote dialogue between different cultures, in a semester that I hope will mark a change in the relationship between Italy and Europe".

The city-organized series of more than 200 concerts, plays, and exhibitions kicks off September 17 with a show of 220 works by early modernist painter Marc Chagall (1887-1985) at the Palazzo Reale.

The iconic French, Russian and Jewish painter, who also created stained glass windows for the United Nations headquarters in New York and for the cathedrals of Rheims and Metz in France, will receive a musical homage in the form of a concert by the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra at the Milan Auditorium, November 28 and 30.

The Palazzo Reale is also host to a show on Italian 19th-century Divisionist painter Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899) opening opening September 18, and a Van Gogh show titled Man and the Earth, featuring oils on canvas and drawings by the great Dutch painter as he explored color through landscape and the mysteries of nature.

From October 16 to March 15, the Novecento Museum hosts an exhibition investigating "the interlacing of the creative trajectories" of French monochrome painter Yves Klein (1928-1962) and Italian painter and sculptor Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), who started the Spatialist movement.

La Scala opera theater opens the season with Beethoven's Fidelio directed by Daniel Barenboim, while various European orchestras and symphonies perform 36 concerts in different city venues.

Milan's Piccolo Theater puts on 25 shows, and theater director Luisa Borsieri offers up a show opening December 9 at the Franco Parenti theater dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci, "a symbol of Milan and of Expo 2015", organizers said.