a project supervised by Claudio Di Palma
organised by Vesuvioteatro.org
within the 2018 edition of Napoli Teatro Festival Italia
directed by Ruggero Cappuccio

at Teatro Sannazaro / June 20 – 27; 2018

We like to imagine sport as a sort of variant (exclusively physical) of art: just like art, constantly experimenting with the knowledge of the limit, it deals with the most extreme – though, perhaps, less conscious – of the deep springs of the human being.
SportOpera was born as an active observatory in which to recover this original relationship between art and sport. It proposes and provokes style exercises on the connivance between sport and the various declinations of art. It re-examines and revives the original re-creative spirit of sport deeply distorted by that split, which occurred in the second century, of the theoretical-intellectual from the totalizing activity of the senses that is the game. A cultural break that has gradually handed over the emotions and passions to the parasitic system of the capital. During SportOpera, theater, cinema, literature become narrative installations and the actor, and the athlete, seek remote and common roots and forms.

The 2018 edition

Il tuffatore preso al ralenti
Disegna un arabesco ragniforme
e in quella cifra forse si identifica
la sua vita. Chi sta sul trampolino
è ancora morto, morto chi ritorna
a nuoto alla scaletta dopo il tuffo,
morto chi lo fotografa, mai nato
chi celebra l’impresa.
Ed è poi vivo
lo spazio di cui vive ogni movente?
Pietà per le pupille, per l’obiettivo,
pietà per tutto che si manifesta,
pietà per il partente e per chi arriva,
pietà per chi raggiunge o ha raggiunto,
pietà per chi non sa che il nulla e il tutto
sono due veli dell’Impronunciabile,
pietà per chi lo sa, per chi lo dice,
per chi lo ignora e brancola nel buio
delle parole!

Eugenio Montale

The diver. His true essence comes out only when he is in flight. The rest is nothing. Action is everything. The rest is not. Not even the diver himself, before or after the jump. And surely not just the word that glorifies the event. Only action can witness life. The rest is not!
The “diver” portrayed by Montale is an ideal manifesto for this edition of SportOpera. An edition focussing on the relationship between sport and literature and, therefore, on the denial of words and their meanings in relation to actions. It is precisely within the conflict in being and not-being, between action and narration, that words attempt a “jump”, a mental leap connecting different thoughts. The spoken word is action: a physical impulse of the actor, an emotional incision. It sums up the action itself. In the hic et nunc of action it gives the narration a new life, recomposing the signs of the drama (“drammaturgia” = dramma, action and ergon = work) imposing a new goal to actions: the continuing of life.

Claudio Di Palma

 

PROGRAMME
SPORTOPERA | WEDNESDAY JUNE 20
20:45 CORPO B – LE MANI by Benedetta Palmieri with Lara Sansone
21:30 MUHAMMAD ALI with Francesco Di Leva, direction by Pino Carbone

SPORTOPERA | THURSDAY JUNE 21
20:45 Presentation of the exhibition MINIATURE by Riccardo Dalisi
21:30 SE SPARTAK PIANGE… with Giovanni Esposito, concept and text by Stefano Valanzuolo
22:30 Film CRONACA DI UNA FUGA – BUENOS AIRES 1977 by Israel Adrián Caetano

SPORTOPERA | FRIDAY JUNE 22
20:45 CORPO B – I PIEDI by Benedetta Palmieri with Lara Sansone
21:30 CANTO POR EL ‘CHE’ DEPORTISTA reading – concert by and with Claudio Di Palma, piano player Danilo Rea
22:30 Film I CINGHIALI DI PORTICI by Diego Olivares

SPORTOPERA | SATURDAY JUNE 23
20:45 TRIBUNE – DISCORSO SU DUE PIEDI from Carmelo Bene and Enrico Ghezzi with Michelangelo Dalisi
21:30 PENTATHLON MODERNO – Five stories on lost bodies, texts by Antonio Franchini, Wanda Marasco, Valeria Parrella, Silvio Perrella, Manlio Santanelli – with Alessandro Cepollaro, Andrea de Goyzueta, Francesca De Nicolais, Renato De Simone, Ettore Nigro, Lucia Rocco

SPORTOPERA | SUNDAY JUNE 24
20:45 LENI, IL TRIONFO DELLA BELLEZZA a project by Irene Alison, with Valentina Acca, collaboration to the drama by Marcello Cotugno
22:00 PENTATHLON MODERNO – Five stories on lost bodies, texts by Antonio Franchini, Wanda Marasco, Valeria Parrella, Silvio Perrella, Manlio Santanelli – with Alessandro Cepollaro, Andrea de Goyzueta, Francesca De Nicolais, Renato De Simone, Ettore Nigro, Lucia Rocco

SPORTOPERA | MONDAY JUNE 25
20:45 TRIBUNE – LO SPORT E GLI UOMINI with Annalisa Madonna (vocals), Gianluca Rovinello (harp), Massimiliano Sacchi (clarinet), Luca Urciuolo (accordion)
21:30 LA NUOTATRICE reading with Pamela Villoresi, directed by Gigi Di Luca
22:30 Film UN UOMO A NUDO by Frank Perry

SPORTOPERA | TUESDAY JUNE 26
20:45 TRIBUNE – TIFO E I SUOI EFFETTI – SPORT ED EUGENETICA from Antonio Piromalli and Nino Pino with Annalisa Madonna (vocals), Gianluca Rovinello (harp), Massimiliano Sacchi (clarinet), Luca Urciuolo (accordion)
21:30 PATRIZIO VS OLIVA by Fabio Rocco Oliva with Patrizio Oliva directed by Alfonso Postiglione

SPORTOPERA | WEDNESDAY JUNE 27
21:00 ROGER with Emilio Solfrizzi, written and directed by Umberto Marino