EDUARDO DE FILIPPO – SONGS AND STAGE PRODUCTIONS
FROM NAPLES TO THE WHOLE WORLD
A project for the Italian Culture Institutes by Maurizio Giammusso and Fatima Scialdone
The project aims to offer the public in the Institutes a chance to get in touch with the most relevant features of Neapolitan culture, symbolized by its main playwright and its musical tradition. This culture has not remained a local item, being famous worldwide.
It is more and more apparent that Eduardo de Filippo (1990-1984), in particular, is one of the great twentieth century Italian artists. As a playwright, he produced comedies still performed worldwide - from Natale in casa Cupiello to Napoli milionaria!, from Filomena Marturano to Sabato, domenica e lunedì. As an actor, his tapes and videos show his matchless playing style, made of lines and jests, looks, and silences. Nor should we forget the depths of his intellectual personality, his relationships with great figures such us Scarpetta, Pirandello, Rossellini, Magnani, and Zeffirelli. All this induced the Italian President Pertini to make him life senator, something that had never happened before to any showmen.
The Neapolitan song from the 18th century on, and especially in the late 19th century and the early 20th, created a poetical-musical repertoire which mirrors a whole people, its sensibility and will to live and love. It is an artistic production that in time became something able to make a whole nation immediately recognizable in foreign people’s eyes. It is a treasure chest full of emotions, and a powerful call luring audiences into singing at least some lines of the songs, during the lecture-shows.
Maurizio Giammusso, Eduardo’s biographer, will be lecturing on Eduardo’s works and life, telling stage anecdotes, and sometimes showing videos.
Fatima Scialdone, actress and singer, with the help of a piano player, will be playing some pieces from Eduardo’s stage and poetry production, and singing some 18th – 20th centuries Neapolitan songs. The songs will be introduced and commented on, in order to provide information on the historical background and anecdotal elements the audience is always very interested in.
The show can be assembled in different ways:
a) as a one-night show, a two-part show about 90 minutes long, the first part being focused on Edoardo, and starting with a short introductory video film, and the second part focused on 18th – 20th centuries Neapolitan songs;
b) as a two-night show, on the first night the show will be 90 minutes long and made up of a lecture introduced by a film on Eduardo. Some short pieces from his stage and poetry production will be performed; on the second night a 90-minute lecture-show focused on Neapolitan songs mixed with short quotations from Eduardo’s works will be performed;
c) the structure and the timing of the show can also be totally different on demand, and include the showing of recorded RAI TV programmes with Eduardo’s comedies. What makes this project so special is the interaction on both nights between the two protagonists, making room for one another in their own parts of the show. This lecture-show has been performed for the first time - with the aid of ambassador A. Vattani - at the Foreign Office Club on February 14, 2005.
Maurizio Giammusso (Rome, 1951) works as a journalist for the ANSA agency, and is a writer and a script writer. For many years he worked as a theatre critic for the ‘Corriere della Sera’. He organized exhibitions and produced TV programmes on Goldoni, Pirandello, and De Filippo. He lectured in Italian universities and several institutes abroad. He has been the chairman of the ITI, the Italian section of the Unesco-Theatre Institute. He is the general Secretary of the Olympic Awards for the Theatre.
Among his books, La fabbrica degli attori. Storia dell’Accademia d’arte drammatica; Eliseo. Un teatro e i suoi protagonisti; Il Dante di Gassman; Il Teatro di Genova; Eduardo da Napoli al mondo; the biography Vita di Eduardo was awarded a prize by the Italian Critics Society; his recent book Vita di Rossellini won the Domenico Meccoli award.
Fatima Scialdone is a theatre actress graduated from the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica S. D’Amico, under the direction of A. Camilleri. She worked with L. Ronconi, G. Patroni Griffi, P. Garinei, and others. In 1999 she joined the meetings in support of the Italian candidacy for the Olympic Games. Later on, with the aid of the Italian Foreign Office, she has been touring abroad with three shows and lectures on Italian elocution and phonation. In May 2003 she was awarded by the Presidenza della Repubblica a special Prize during the Italian Culture Week.
Technical report and prices on demand.
For information:
Organizzazione Roberto Di Palma
robydipalma@virgilio.it
Phone/ fax (0039) 06 5193027