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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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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

Convict-Actors Recite Dante

November 27, 2021 By Hannah Raisner, FSU '25

screenshot-of-image-of-performance-from-news-article

“Three long-term convicts turned actors who appeared in the Taviani brothers’ prison-set Caesar Must Die Shakespearian film drama are to get out of jail for three hours to recite Dante’s Inferno at a Rome university symposium Thursday marking the 700th anniversary of the Supreme Poet’s death.

“Filippo, Giovanni and Francesco, serving lengthy terms for criminal association in the mafia wing of Rebibbia Prison, will be special guests at the event organized by the pontifical Dante commission.

“The three men said they hoped the three hours would be long enough for them to ‘see the stars again’ like Dante does when he emerges from the pit of Hell.”    –ANSA, November 23, 2021

Categories: Performing Arts, Places
Tagged with: 700th anniversary, Hell, Inferno, Italy, Live Performances, Mafia, Paolo and Francesca, Performance Art, Prisons, Rome, Stars, Ugolino, Ulysses, Universities

Inferno, Romeo Castellucci (2008)

November 21, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

white-sea-of-cloth-descends-upon-the-audience-performance-experiment

[. . .] “Romeo Castellucci attempts to ‘hurl down The Divine Comedy on the earth of a stage’. He offers the spectator, in three stages and at three venues of the Festival, a crossing, the experience of a Divine Comedy.

“Inferno is a monument of pain. The artist must pay. In a dark wood in which he is immediately plunged, he doubts, he fears, he suffers. But what sin is the artist guilty of? If he is thus lost, it is because he does not know the answer to this question. Alone on the large stage, or on the contrary, walled in by the crowd and confronted with the world’s hubbub, the man that Romeo Castellucci puts on stage fully suffers, bewildered from this experience of loss of self. Everything here aggresses him, the violence of the images, the fall of his own body into matter, the animals and spectres. The visual dynamic of this show possesses the consistency of this stupor, sometimes this dread, that seizes the man when he is reduced to his paltriness, defenceless faced with the elements that overwhelm him. But this fragility is a resource, however, because it is the condition of a paradoxical gentleness. Romeo Castellucci shows each spectator that at the bottom of his own fears there is a secret space, marked by melancholy, in which he hangs on to life, to ‘the incredible nostalgia of his own life.'” [. . .]    —Festival D’Avignon, 2008

Watch segments of the show here.

Relatedly, see our post on Romeo Castellucci’s earlier 2002 commendation here.

This theatrical piece will be discussed by scholar Sara Fontana in her contribution to the forthcoming volume Dante Alive.

Categories: Performing Arts
Tagged with: 2008, Adaptations, Animals, Architecture, Costumes, Dark Wood, Dogs, Festivals, France, Journeys, Live Performances, Paris, Performance Art, Suffering, Theatre, Translations

Hadestown Musical – Music, Lyrics, and Book by Anaïs Mitchell (2019)

November 10, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

 

hadestown-staging-photo

“The musical Hadestown (music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell) brings a new take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Much like Dante in the Inferno, the characters of Orpheus in Hadestown travel through an inferno-like factory run by Hades, the god of the underworld. Although the tragic hero Orpheus is mentioned in Canto IV of Dante’s Inferno, the similarities between the Divine Comedy and Hadestown do not stop there.”    –Contributor Ava Buchanan

A notable link between the musical and the Inferno is the staging of the piece, which relies heavily on circular motion to move the plot forward (a common motif employed by Dante). Furthermore, the character of Hermes within the musical acts as a Virgil-like guide for Orpheus with the added omnipresent, post-narrative knowledge of Dante “the Poet”.

As a side note, the official Hadestown website notes that it is a “haunting and hopeful theatrical experience that grabs you and never lets go.” This statement echoes Peter Hawkins who – in his biographic essay on Dante – states that “no one remains unchanged by the Commedia.”

The original cast Broadway cast recording of Hadestown can be found here.

Contributed by Ava Buchanan (University of Arkansas, ’23)

Categories: Performing Arts
Tagged with: American Theatre, Broadway, Canto 4, Circles, Death, Hell, Inferno, Live Performances, Musicals, Orpheus, Performance Art, Theatre, United States

Dante 700th London

September 10, 2021 By Professor Arielle Saiber


Visit the 3D exhibition here
“ma per trattar del ben ch’i vi trovai” Divina Commedia, Inferno Canto I
​

DANTE 700TH London
3rd – 30th September 2021
Dante Society London 22, Bryanston Mews West London W1H 2DD

Visits to the exhibition by appointment only. Contact us by mail.

The exhibition with the participation of a collective of artists from Italy, the United Kingdom, China and the United States of America will take place in London at the Dante Society London premises, during the month of September 2021. The artists accepted the invitation to explore and interpret Dante’s writing and its relevance in the 21st century, each with their own unique artistic brilliance. The original interpretations represent an exceptional panorama that celebrates Dante’s anniversary in a special manner and offers a contemporary perspective in the various artistic and multimedia representations.

The selected artists of Dante 700th London:
Bianca Froese-Acquaye, Despina Symeou, Emilio Guazzone, Francesco Filippini, Giuseppe Pipino, Iluà Hauck da Silva, Jackie Carter, Kat Mustatea, Laura Parker, Louise Marchal, Maurizio Coglia, Michela Papavassiliou, Paolo Rambelli, Rocco Epifanio, Shadi Almualem, Teresa Cecchi and la classe di chimica ITT ‘G.E.Montani, Ying Zheng.
Dante 700th London Prize Jury: Alexandra Lawrence, Dario Pisano, Patrizia Poggi.
Our most heartfelt thanks for supporting this initiative.

The winner of the exclusive interview granted by London One Radio, the first Italian radio in the United Kingdom is: Kat Mustatea
Awarded for Voidopolis – a digital performance about loss and memory currently unfolding on her Instagram feed @kmustatea

Categories: Music, Performing Arts, Visual Art & Architecture, Written Word
Tagged with: 2021, 700th anniversary, Digital Art, England, London, Painting, Performance Art, Poetry, Radio, Sculpture, Theater

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How to Cite

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

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