text by Marco Baliani collaboration for the dramaturgy Ilenia Carrone music Mirto Baliani performed by
Cristiano Arcelli sax and bass clarinet
Mirto Baliani harmonium and samplers
Giacomo Gaudenzi cello
Francesco Tedde guitar and modular synths
production Comune di Bergamo, Teatro Donizetti, Casa degli Alfieri
The word ‘courage’ is usually associated with a sensational, death-defying act. But there is another kind of courage, silent and unassuming, and it is this kind of courage that the play is about. Inconspicuous courage acts almost unexpectedly, it doesn’t need a warlike temperament, nor does it expect a reward. Antigone, who buries her brother’s body despite Creon’s prohibition, is a prime example: “The immortal unrecorded laws of the gods. / They are not today merely now: they were, and shall be for ever / and no one knows the origins of their splendour”. This is the splendour I seek in five stories of unassuming courage: a rigorous dramaturgical structure in which words and music combine to recreate the scandalous simplicity of those human acts of silent valour (Marco Baliani).
Figli d’Arte Cuticchio Histoire du soldat music Igor Stravinsky libretto Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
voice, stage adaptation and directionMimmo Cuticchio
Soloists of the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini conductor Giovanni Conti
«Those who maintain that they only enjoy music to the full with their eyes shut do not hear better than when they have them open; on the contrary, the absence of visual distractions enables them to abandon themselves to the reveries induced by the lullaby of its sounds» (Stravinsky). So, why not entrust Mimmo Cuticchio’s puppets with a new tale about a violin-playing soldier duped by the devil? The wooden-heads are the ‘siblings’ of Petruška, whom the Russian composer himself considered «the immortal and unhappy hero of every fairs in all countries». Cuticchio’s ‘cuntu’ and the gestural expressiveness of his puppets will provide nourishment for the listener’s visual and auditory intelligence, while the Cherubini Soloists, conducted by the young Giovanni Conti, will bring the score to life.
Una iniziativa di Ravenna Festival per e nei territori alluvionati
Palazzo della Proviancia Forlì-Cesena |
12 March 2024 | at 12:00 PM
Presentation of the program 2024
XXXIV edition
Teatro Alighieri |
24 February 2024 | at 11:00 AM
Sandro Lombardi reads Testori
Chiostro del Museo Nazionale |
12 July 2023 | at 7:30 PM
On the centenary of the birth of Giovanni Testori (1923-1993) Sandro Lombardi reads Testori
Mater Strangosciàs, 7.30 pm
Gli angeli dello sterminio, 9.30 pm with the participation of Francesca Ciocchetti
A “strange sweetness”, as Walter Siti puts it, animates the torrent of confused, dialectal, mangled, sibilant but necessary words that the late Testori seems to have wished to bequeath not only to posterity but also to Sandro Lombardi himself, who probably owes the most convincing achievements of his long career to the dense and versatile pen of the Milanese genius. An actor of unusual intensity, Lombardi does not smooth over literary roughness and is used to plunging into emotional depths where others fear to tread. Twenty years later, he returns to Testori, the witness to the end, the poet of the Milanese apocalypse, the devotee of a stranguished Madonna, and dedicates an “unbridled ode to life” to those who have known torment.
Milano Marittima, Palazzo dei Congressi |
14 June 2023 | at 9:30 PM
Il Trebbo in musica 2.3
Tribute to Italo Calvino on the centenary of his birth (1923-1985) Le città invisibili with Sergio Rubini
Michele Fazio piano
concept and artistic coordination Elena Marazzita adaptation Cosimo Damiano Damato
AidaStudioProduzioni
with the contribution of Cooperativa Bagnini Cervia
We will never know exactly what the relationship is between Kublai Khan’s maps and the cities bearing women’s names described by Marco Polo: the narrative unfolds precisely in the impossible reconciliation of the secret reasons of the narrator’s voice and the inscrutable ones of the listener. And what we learn about these cities always brings us back to the labyrinthine essence of each place and the ambiguity of each story. Thus, among the “invisible cities” there are some where it is not clear whether an object is a thing or a sign, some where the enthusiasm for novelty is threatened by dangerous piles of rubbish from a past life, some that were left unfinished and some that are already in ruins. Sergio Rubini takes on the task of unravelling this dialogue, carving a path through Calvino’s cities, supported by the jazzy echoes of Michele Fazio’s piano.
Milano Marittima, Arena dello Stadio dei Pini |
03 July 2022 | at 9:30 PM
Tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pierfrancesco Pisani presents Il sogno di una cosa
freely adapted from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s masterpiece by and with Elio Germano e Teho Teardo
with the contribution of Cooperativa Bagnini Cervia
In Friuli, the lives of three young men are cut short by the hardships of the world: the misery of the peasant milieu, the experience of migration, the political struggles, and then the integration into the middle-class of the booming economy. They yearn for happiness and a comfortable life abroad, develop a political consciousness, dream of revolution, then yield to the compromises of adulthood, likely to meet a work-related death.
In his first narrative experiment, Pasolini speaks in the voices of those who fled poverty-stricken post-war Italy to illegally enter Yugoslavia, attracted by the Communist utopia and by the promise of work and food for everyone. A counter-exodus on the Balkan route, across the same border that today’s refugees try to reach to enter Italy: we seem to have forgotten it, but just a short way back, we were the ones who resorted to passeurs.
Milano Marittima, Arena dello Stadio dei Pini |
Available to 31th December
Il Trebbo in musica 2.2
Il duce delinquente
by and with Aldo Cazzullo andMoni Ovadia cello, piano, and vocals Giovanna Famulari
organiser Corvino Produzioni
with the contribution of Cooperativa Bagnini Cervia
Alongside his fervent activity as a journalist, Aldo Cazzullo has grown increasingly fond of the theatre, where he narrates the essential facts and figures of Italian history bringing together his own curiosity and the talent of actors and musicians. In order to shed light on Benito Mussolini and Fascism, whose granite propaganda got consolidated through the Duce’s private and public crimes and betrayals, Cazzullo needs the “stinging” Moni Ovadia to lend his voice to both Mussolini and his victims. The eclectic Giovanna Famulari provides a soundtrack to this tale for two voices, with music and songs from the period. We will follow the events that led to WWII, and their profound impact on the history of our country.
