Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
Dante Finance is a Tomb finance fork project launched in 2022. As they explain on their site and in their blog on Medium, they plan to release NFTs based on Dante’s Inferno.
Their site features artwork by Matteo Berton (see the related post on Dante Today here).
Fans of the Fiorentia football team “welcomed” back player Dusan Vlahovic to the team with a reference to Dante.
Vlahovic left Fiorentia to play for Juventus in January, but recently returned to Forentia. He was greeted with “a very special banner covering the entire end of the arena that referenced Canto 26, the section of Dante’s Inferno, where his protagonist continues his journey through hell, that is dedicated to frauds,” Football Italia said.
The banner read: “Vlahovic, throughout Hell thy name is spread about!”
“Bad Dante Bad English Bad Opera is a new version of Dante’s classic Purgatory from The Divine Comedy. The strict verse form from the original Italian version has been maintained, but the text has been rewritten into anti-academic “street language” English.
“From a stripped-down stage, four singers/actors and three string players present the first nine cantos of Purgatory: Antepurgatorio. Here, in transit between hell and paradise, Dante meets the souls who are waiting to atone for their sins. Human emotions such as imperfection, justice, confusion, and tolerance are explored in a smart, refreshing, and humorous way.
“The chamber opera Bad Dante Bad English Bad Opera is created by Spreafico Eckly, the Bergen-based production company of writer and theatre director Andrea Spreafico, and composer and artist Matteo Fargion.” [. . .] —Bergen International Festival (retrieved March 26, 2022)
The opera will have its world premiere at the Bergen International Festival on June 7-8, 2022. Learn more about the opera and watch a trailer here.
Custom birthday cake made by Heather Frost Hughes (Head Pastry Chef and General Manager, DeLuxe Bakery) and Mary Simmons of Iowa City.
Contributed by Daniel Christian
“So the biographer must ultimately choose: Either hew to the evidence and ferret out whatever rare nugget about Dante’s life remains uncovered, or surrender to the genius of the work he called his Comedìa and try to broker a fragile peace between literary interpretation and life writing.
“In a new biography timed (in its original Italian publication) to the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death in 1321 and translated fluidly by Allan Cameron, the Italian historian and novelist Alessandro Barbero chooses the first option. His vita, or life, of Dante, revisits some of the perennial riddles in Dante studies: Did the poet make it to Paris during his exile? (Barbero believes yes, contrary to most.) What was Dante’s socioeconomic class? (In Barbero’s view, higher than many think.) While still in Florence before his exile, did Dante conceive the project that would later become his Comedy? (Perhaps so, Barbero argues, once again against the grain.)
“We can be grateful to Barbero for this richly informative biography of a man who can seem so reticent and aloof that at times it feels as if he’s hiding behind the 14,233 verses of “The Divine Comedy” rather than revealing himself. But for those who are looking to learn more about the Dante in us, a biography has to do more than deliver the plausible facts. And so the quest for a vita of Dante in English will likely lead us right back to where Emerson suggested: the poetry from Dante’s own hand.” [. . .] — Joseph Luzzi, The New York Times, January 4, 2022 (retrieved January 17, 2022)
See our other post relating to Barbero and the 700th Anniversary here.
