Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

  • Submit a Citing
  • Map
  • Links
  • Bibliography
  • User’s Guide
  • Teaching Resources
  • About

Bad Dante Bad English Bad Opera Chamber Opera, Production Company Spreafico Eckly (2022)

March 26, 2022 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

bad_dante_opera_performance_photo

“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.

Categories: Music, Performing Arts
Tagged with: 2022, Bergen, Chamber Music, Emotions, Festivals, Humor, Live Performances, Norway, Operas, Performance Art, Purgatorio, Purgatory

Hexperos, “Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life” (2020)

November 14, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

hexperos-midway-upon-the-journey-of-our-life-album-cover

Hexperos’ 2020 release, “Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life” draws inspiration from Canto I of the Inferno.

“‘Midway upon the journey of our life, we could found ourselves within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.’ Never there was a sentence more apt to describe the disturbance we all feel at some point of our lives, when we feel lost, empty and we don’t know if the road that we have chosen, the journey of life undertaken, is actually the right one for us.

“The songs are stories of life, of sharing as well as in the Divine Comedy. As a matter of fact, who is in pain, often makes new encounters, shares their stories, through sharing and listening to the experiences of others we grow, we find a light in the darkness.” [. . .]    — Alessandra Santovito, Hexperos

Listen to the song here.

Learn more about Hexperos on their website, here.

Album art by Nicolás Menay

Categories: Music
Tagged with: 2020, Album Art, Albums, Dark Wood, Emotions, Illustrations, Italy, Journeys, Music, Musical Instruments, Nel Mezzo del Cammin, Selva oscura, Songs, Suffering, Voice

Junji Ito’s Horror Manga Uzumaki (1998-1999)

October 31, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

uzumaki-horror-manga-panel“Uzumaki is the story of Kirie Goshima, a young girl living in a coastal town that is slowly falling into the grip of a ‘spiral curse.’ The townsfolk, to varying degrees, become obsessed and subsequently infected by spirals.

“Ito-san’s spirals operate with similar symbolic significance to the circles of hell, namely, they are partly allegorical, as well as literal, of the spirals and endless cycles of human behavior…as in Dante’s hell all things become literal, he is physically twisted to reflect his psychological reality. Each person in Uzumaki is trapped in their own sin.

“Junji Ito understands, as Dante did, that even positive emotions like love have a place in hell when they are taken to extremes. Like a spiral itself, the story circles whilst drawing ever closer to a central point…like Dante, Junji Ito doesn’t flinch from showing us the full expanse and architecture of the hell he has created, and we see the very “nadir” or low-point of the spiral, and what that represents.” [. . .]    –Joseph Sale, The English Cantos, April 8, 2020 (retrieved October 27, 2021)

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture, Written Word
Tagged with: 1998, 1999, Circles of Hell, Comics, Emotions, Graphic Novels, Horror, Japan, Manga, Psychology, Spiral, Visual Art

Marica Mentier, “The History of Happiness,” The Science of Emotions

November 19, 2020 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“[Marica] Mentier recounts how she encountered Dante’s Commedia in college and cites the famous valedictory by Virgil in Purg. 27: ‘Take henceforth your pleasure as your guide.’ She continues, ‘Over the course of his journey, he has acquired the wisdom to know where true happiness lies, and now his heart will unerringly guide him there.’ (p.17)” –Contributor Alan R. Perry

Contributed by Alan R. Perry (Gettysburg College)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2017, Emotions, Happiness, Magazines, Pleasure, Virgil

Categories

  • Consumer Goods (194)
  • Digital Media (126)
  • Dining & Leisure (107)
  • Music (190)
  • Odds & Ends (91)
  • Performing Arts (361)
  • Places (132)
  • Visual Art & Architecture (416)
  • Written Word (845)

Random Post

  • “The Close Reader: Let the Punishment Fit the Crime”

Frequent Tags

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 700th anniversary Abandon All Hope America American Politics Art Artists Beatrice Blogs Books California Circles of Hell Comics Dark Wood Divine Comedy England Fiction Films Florence France Games Gates of Hell Hell History Humor Illustrations Inferno Internet Italian Italy Journalism Journeys Literary Criticism Literature Love Music New York City Non-Fiction Novels Paintings Paolo and Francesca Paradise Paradiso Performance Art Poetry Politics Purgatorio Purgatory Religion Restaurants Reviews Rock Science Fiction Sculptures Social Media Technology Television Tenth Circle Theater Translations United Kingdom United States Universities Video Games Virgil

ALL TAGS »

Image Mosaic

How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

Creative

 





© 2006-2023 Dante Today
research.bowdoin.edu