The “Cantiere Dante” by Teatro delle Albe arrives in Argentina
“The universality of Dante's narration speaks to everyone and at any latitude”, says Marco Martinelli, who with Ermanna Montanari conceived "Dante in the five continents", a special project for the "DANTE 700 in the World" celebrations produced by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Municipality of Ravenna, and the Dante Celebrations Committee.
Postponed due to the pandemic, the project now arrives in South America. From September 28 to October 5, Teatro delle Albe is at the Teatro San Martín in Buenos Aires, where five performances of the show fedeli d’Amore (Love's faithful) and an open workshop curated by Martinelli, The Poet’s Purgatory, are scheduled.
The two artists have been carrying out a ceaseless dramaturgical, vocal, musical, and visual research on Dante and the Divine Comedy for years, a path from which extraordinary fruits were born.
fedeli d’Amore is a further piece of this research. It is a “polyptych in seven panels for Dante Alighieri” written by Marco Martinelli and devised and directed together with Ermanna Montanari.
Different voices speak to us in the single panels, and speak of the refugee, of the poet fled from his own city that has condemned him to burning at the stake and now on his deathbed, exiled in Ravenna, sick with ague. Those voices are suspended between the fourteenth century and our own day, and Martinelli’s writing holds together political and metaphysical “reality”, the chronicle and spirituality.
Ermanna Montanari – “alone, puissant, radical, at the lectern or in the proscenium, with that great voice” (R. Di Giammarco) – guides the spectators on this journey “about” Dante and our present day, in an extraordinary interpretation that earned her the Ubu Prize as Best Actress.
The show is staged at the Teatro San Martín from September 30 to October 5 (08:30 pm).
The open workshop The Poet’s Purgatory by Marco Martinelli also take place at the Teatro San Martín, from September 28 to October 2.
Martinelli invites the participants not to look at Dante as a "monument” that intimidates but as «the man who reveals himself, he confesses to us: “I find myself”, he is the brother, the mortally wounded who indicates the fragile path of "our” life, everyone’s life» and suggests how to embark on the journey that will ferry us from darkness to light. Participants will work on the first two cantos of Inferno, mixed with poetic fragments by Emily Dickinson, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Walt Whitman, and other poets of 'the poets’ Purgatory' constellation.
The « choral action », final outcome of the workshop, will be open to the public (October 2, 06:00 pm).
The stage in Argentina of the "Dante in the five continents" project is organized by the Italian Cultural Institute in Buenos Aires, the Teatro Coliseo, and the Complejo Teatral di Buenos Aires (CTBA)/Teatro San Martín within the ITALIAXXI project, with the support of the Embassy of Italy in Buenos Aires, the MAECI, Emilia-Romagna Region and ATER Fondazione.
