a polyptych in seven panels for Dante Alighieri
by Marco Martinelli
devised and directed by Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari
on stage Ermanna Montanari
music Luigi Ceccarelli
trumpet Simone Marzocchi
sound director Marco Olivieri
space and costumes Ermanna Montanari and Anusc Castiglioni
shadows Anusc Castiglioni
light design Enrico Isola
lighting and video technician Fagio
shadows technician Alessandro Pippo Bonoli
musical realisation Edisonstudio Roma
musical consultancy Francesco Altilio, Giulio Cintoni, Cristian Maddalena, Mirjana Nardelli, Fabrizio Nastari, Giovanni Tancredi, Andrea Veneri
iconographic consultancy Alessandro Volpe
organisation and promotion Silvia Pagliano, Francesca Venturi
produced by Teatro delle Albe/Ravenna Teatro in collaboration with Fondazione Campania dei Festival – Napoli Teatro Festival and Ravenna Festival
Teatro Sannazaro
June 15 and 16, H 21.00
June 17, H 19.00
timing 1 H
fedeli d’Amore is a “polyptych in seven panels” written by Marco Martinelli. Different voices speak to us in the individual panels: the fog of a Ravenna night in 1321, the demon of the pit, a donkey on the cross, the scuffle devil, Italy kicking herself, Dante Alighieri’s daughter Antonia, and an end that is not an end.
These voices speak to us of the refugee, of the poet who fled his own city which had condemned him to burning at the stake, and now he is on his deathbed, exiled in Ravenna, sick with ague. First the fog slips into the window cracks, enters that room and describes him thus, with his mind misted and delirious, on the threshold of the extreme transition.
That poor flesh weakens, and in expiring it is assailed by visions and flashes from the past, until he once more finds the ancient friendship with Love’s faithful, until the vision of the child Dante. Voice and writing trace out opposition to the state of things that still govern the world today, as they governed it in the late Middle Ages. Love is what makes rebels of us, it is the force that frees humanity from violence, that saves “the garden plot that renders us so fierce”.
The voices of this “polyptych” are one single voice that can contain numberless voices, that of Ermanna Montanari: air, fire, sound, matter. The dramaturgy carries the sign of Marco Martinelli’s “corsair” writing, interweaving the intimate with the political, psyche and world.
This “polyptych” for the stage enriches the itinerary which, together with Ravenna Festival, Martinelli, Montanari and Teatro delle Albe began in 2017 with Inferno, and which will continue in 2019 and 2021 with the other two parts of The Divine Comedy.
Love’s faithful is one more tessera in their ceaseless dramaturgical, vocal, musical and visual research, alongside such wise folk as Luigi Ceccarelli and Marco Olivieri, Anusc Castiglioni and Simone Marzocchi; and it lies in that furrow where the vocal-sound alchemy of the figure is central.
