Teatro delle Albe theatre company ‘voice’ of Dante
On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) has produced the audiobook Dalla selva oscura al Paradiso (From the dark wood to Paradise), presenting select passages from the Divine Comedy in thirty-three languages.
The audiobook wad made in partnership with the Municipality of Ravenna and in collaboration with Teatro delle Albe/Ravenna Teatro, with the scientific curatorship by two renowned Dante scholars, Alberto Casadei (University of Pisa) and Sebastiana Nobili (University of Bologna-Ravenna). It is edited by Emons Records.
The Foreign Ministry’s Directorate-General for Cultural and Economic Promotion and Innovation, which conceived the project, involved thirty-two Italian Cultural Institute. Each one sent a recording in their own language of readings of select passages from the Divine Comedy by local actors.
The Italian version was made by Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari of the Teatro delle Albe theatre company in Ravenna, who have been researching Dante's poem for years.
Teatro delle Albe’s inestimable research ‘around Dante’ has produced many fruitful results.
The memorable staging of Inferno (2017, in Ravenna) and Purgatorio (2019, in Ravenna and Matera), made through a ‘public call’: the invitation to all citizens –without limit of number, age, language or specific preparation– to take part in the realization of the project La Divina Commedia: 2017-2021, that will be completed with Paradiso in 2021.
Or the theatre lab and performance Divina Commedia that involved 150 children of one of the biggest African slums, Kibera (“wood”, in Swahili language) in Kenya, an extraordinary experience Martinelli tells in his documentary The Sky over Kibera.
And more, the show fedeli d’Amore, a reflection on the power of Dante’s poetry, with the equally powerful interpretation by Ermanna Montanari, winner of the 2018 Ubu Prize as Best Actress.
The audiobook Dalla selva oscura al Paradiso lets us (re)discover the masterpiece that gave birth to the Italian language, the extraordinary poem still arousing the interest of artists and readers from all Countries.
Because, like Martinelli says in his book Nel nome di Dante: «this overwhelmed me in reading, the discover that that book hid and at the same time revealed only to me the sound of my tears, of my hunger for life, as if Dante had written that enormous poem just for me, for me, Marco son of Luciana and Vincenzo».
The box set including the audiobook and a 130-page booklet with the Italian and English text, will be distributed to all Embassies, Consulates, Italian Cultural Institutes abroad in 2021.
A QR code allows the free download of the 33 versions of the poem, also available, free of charge, on Spreaker, Spotify, Deezer, Apple, and Google platforms.
In Autumn 2021, after the last performance of La Divina Commedia: 2017-2021, we hope a new ambitious project by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation curated by Teatro delle Albe and co-financed by Emilia-Romagna Region could start: to take Dante and his work to “all continents”.
The idea is to propose not the complete show but ‘dives into Dante’, making his work dialogue with the culture of the guest Country.