Natalino Balasso at the Roman Theater of Verona in the Iliad rewritten by Baricco
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29 August 2022 | 08. 55
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National premiere from 1 to 3 September directed by Alberto Rizzi
National premiere at the Roman Theater of Verona, Thursday 1 September at 21. 15 (with replicas on 2 and 3 September at the same time), Homer’s Iliad in the rewriting of Alessandro Baricco, with Natalino Balasso directed by Alberto Rizzi. The show, a co-production by Estate Teatrale Veronese and the Atlantide Foundation – Teatro Stabile di Verona, inaugurates the classic September section of the festival organized by the Municipality of Verona.
On stage with Natalino Balasso, Diego Facciotti, Chiara Mascalzoni, Marta Cortellazzo Wiel, Pietro Traldi, Chiara Pellegrin and Luca Boscolo. A choral show where Balasso presents himself in an unprecedented guise, in the role of a tragically grotesque Agamemnon. “For this show I made my work as an actor available in an epic-dramatic context”, says Balasso. He continues: “I would like to underline, in fact, that it is a tragic show. I say this because it is right to go to the theater without expecting what will be seen, but it would also be wrong to go there expecting something else”.
Alberto Rizzi, Veronese author and director of theater and cinema, winner of the award for best direction at the Italian Film Festival 2021 for Si dies only alive, he builds his own direction with the same modernity with which Baricco has faced the rewriting of the Iliad: a visual and visionary game, where – in a continuous movement of images and scenes – the viewer is catapulted from the towers of Troy to the beaches of the Greeks, from virile and bare camps to gilded and sumptuous rooms. “To stage the Iliad today – declares Rizzi, who also takes care of the scenes and costumes of the show – means once again reading the present, the monstrous war that roars even today in our ears. Baricco removes the gods from the field and leaves men alone . In this way he transforms the epic into a private, everyday drama. And time, from the time of men, has become the time of heroes “.
Satisfied the artistic director of the festival, Carlo Mangolini, who states: “It is the season of the relaunch, an edition of the Festival that saw the artists loved by the public and the big companies return to Verona. This is why we are happy to open the September with this show, starring a cast of different generations led by Natalino Balasso and directed by Alberto Rizzi. We wanted to bring the big names back to the stage to strengthen the involvement of spectators, Veronese and not, with the aim of making them regain possession of the own cultural life attr having a fruitful dialogue between the arts, after the blockade generated by the pandemic that we all hope to have left behind for good “.
Piermario Vescovo, artistic director of the Verona building, concludes: “We are pleased to be producers, for the classic programming of the Summer Theatrical Veronese, of this Iliad, a modern interrogation operation, for a contemporary classicism of ours. The theatrical adaptations of Homeric poems date back to ancient times. today unsurpassed in terms of how a narrative becomes a dramatic text and a spectacle. This is because the Homeric epic is made up of voices, of men and women acting, and whoever tells or listens gradually becomes each of them “.
