8 shows from November to March: 5 regional exclusives, a national premiere and a production of the Teatro Stabile dell’Umbria.
The time of the evening performances is brought forward to 8.45 pm.
“Once again this year, the theatre season guides us to the discovery of great classics and contemporary authors who are able to give us glimpses of existences that travel between drama and comedy,” said Mayor Andrea Sisti. “Behind the curtain, as always, there is the extraordinary, impeccable work of the Teatro Stabile dell’Umbria, which allows us to present the public with eight shows of great quality that no-one can miss, including an evening dedicated to dance with the Balletto di Roma. Spoleto has always responded with warmth and affection to the Season’s proposals, and I am sure that this time too the people of Spoleto will fill the Teatro Nuovo Gian Carlo Menotti and the Teatro Caio Melisso – Spazio Carla Fendi with their love and passion for theatre.“.
“Spoleto is historically linked to the world of artistic creation – quotes TSU Artistic Director Nino Marino – The historic relationship between the Festival Of Two Worlds and the Teatro Stabile dell’Umbria has made a deep love for art, and specifically for theatre and dance, grow and take root. This year, together with the city administration, we have designed a Season with great names and authors, to experience the magic of theatre together”.
Spoleto’s 2022/3 theatre season opens with Othello, one of William Shakespeare’s most intense tragedies brought to the stage by director Andrea Baracco, scheduled from 19 to 21 November at the Teatro Caio Melisso – Spazio Carla Fendi. “The text of Othello, with its abysmal questions on the ambiguity of nature and human relations, has accompanied me for many years – the director’s words – At the foundation of the project I imagined a principle of overturning the Shakespearean canon: an exclusively female cast. A poetic choice. A deception, to free the public’s gaze from prejudices about the story and its themes, and to let itself be crossed by the terrible awareness that any one of us can find itself playing the role of victim or executioner”.
Tuesday 20 December, the Season continues at the Teatro Nuovo Gian Carlo Menotti with La dolce ala della giovinezza by American playwright Tennessee Williams, directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, translated by Masolino d’Amico and starring Elena Sofia Ricci and Gabriele Anagni. Written in 1952 and premiered on Broadway in 1959, the play tells of the gigolo Chance Wayne who returns to his hometown in Florida with fading star Alexandra Del Lago to try to get back what he left behind in his youth, Heavenly, his first love. “Williams has an extraordinary ability to build female characters on the edge of delirium, on the edge of the abyss,” explains the director. “In a masterful way, he combines levity, self-destruction, violation, abandonment, fall and redemption in a non-stop ride, a crescendo that leaves you breathless”.
Friday 13 January Roman author, writer and performer Arianna Porcelli Safonov brings her new live project Fiaba-fobia to the stage. As the author recounts, it is ‘a series of short stories investigating the phobias that accompany us, sometimes for a lifetime, sometimes more than relatives. Written to laugh and to think, hoping that no one will be afraid to laugh and to think. Laughter is the language we need to enter into one of the most topical, challenging and least discussed topics of this historical moment: fear as a social rudder‘.
Tuesday 31 January the playbill offers the National Premiere of Uno sguardo dal ponte by Arthur Miller directed by Massimo Popolizio, who also stars on stage with eight other actors. All the action is one long flash-back, in pure Hollywood style; the protagonist takes the stage when the entire audience already knows that he is dead and, as Popolizio explains in his notes “this play represents a magnificent opportunity to stage a text that resembles a film script and I believe that a theatrical version that takes all these children into account could be interesting and amusing. A great story told like a film, but in the theatre’. (The play is staged at the Teatro Nuovo Gian Carlo Menotti, where it will make its debut before starting a tour in the most important theatres in Italy).
Wednesday 8 February the exhilarating and caustic comedy by the great Eduardo De Filippo Ditegli sempre di sì goes on stage, directed by Roberto Andò, produced by Elledieffe – La Compagnia di Teatro di Luca De Filippo, now directed by Carolina Rosi, and co-produced with the Fondazione Teatro della Toscana. Ditegli sempre di sì is one of the earliest texts by Eduardo De Filippo, a text with a perfect mechanism balanced between comedy and tragedy, capable of exploring the labyrinths of the human mind between “normality” and “madness”.
Sunday 26 February it’s the turn of dance, with the show Première, born from Andrea Costanzo Martini’s encounter with the dancers of the Balletto di Roma and his fascination for these young artists who pursue their desire for movement, both as a personal feeling and as a common need. The show celebrates humanity, investigates biographies, the unique and unrepeatable stories of each one.
Saturday 11 March, Stefano Massini – the first Italian author to receive a Tony Award, the Oscar of American theatre – goes on stage at the Teatro Nuovo Gian Carlo Menotti with his L’alfabeto delle emozioni, an extremely profound and at the same time ironic journey into the labyrinth of our feeling and sentiment. In an imaginary alphabet in which each letter is an emotion (P for Paura, F for Felicità, M for Malinconia…), Massini drags the audience into a succession of irresistible stories and examples, with the unique aim of calling by name what moves us from within; on stage is the strength and fragility of the human being, painted with the flair and fun of a passionate storyteller.
The Season ends on Monday 27 March with The Mother by Florian Zeller, French writer and playwright, Oscar winner in 2021 for best non-original screenplay for his first film The Father. The play, starring the popular Lunetta Savino and with Andrea Renzi directed by Marcello Cotugno, investigates with extreme acuity the theme of maternal love and the possible pathological drifts it can lead to.
Subscriptions and tickets
PRE-EMPTION for subcribers of the 2021/2022 season rolls from Thursday 3 through Sunday 6 November.
Sale of NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS: Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 November.
TEATRO CAIO MELISSO SPAZIO CARLA FENDI Piazza del Duomo, 4. T 0743 222209 / 338 8562727.
TICKET SALES will start on Thursday 17 November.
Online sale on www.teatrostabile.umbria.it
Phone Booking: 075 57542222, weekdays from 17.00 to 20.00, until the day before the performance. Reservations can be made after the last performance of the previous show.
Ticket box Teatro Caio Melisso: T 0743 222209, on the day of the performance from 5 p.m. for 8.45 p.m. shows and from 3 p.m. for 5 p.m. shows.
Ticket box Teatro Caio Melisso: Via Vaita S.Andrea, 20, T 0743 222647, on the day of the performance from 5 p.m. for 8.45 p.m. shows and from 3 p.m. for 5 p.m. shows.
