The season of the Vittorio Emanuele Theater of Messina will start tonight with “L’Allu”, a show directed by Giampiero Cicciò, who takes the translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy on stage by the Poet of Messina Tommaso Cannizzaro: an original and fascinating perspective on the Dante masterpiece, merging the greatness of Dante’s verses with the richness and vibrating tones of the Sicilian language. We talked about it with Cicciò.
It is the first scheduled appointment of the season. What is Infernu?
«It is a show that reveals the background of artistic creation in the theater during the test phases. This approach offers spectators the opportunity to live the divine comedy in Tommaso Cannizzaro’s Sicilian translation from an unprecedented angle, I believe more engaging than a simple reading of the songs ».
How does the narrative path develop?
«Through the selection of twelve of the most famous songs of hell and every week, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, until October 5, we will present three different songs. So the public if he wants will be able to return every week and attend a completely different staging every time. We begin today, tomorrow and Sunday with the first three songs of hell ».
Why Dante and why this choice to propose it in Cannizzaro’s translation?
“The idea is by Giovanni Anfuso, artistic director of the prose section, who offered me this direction for a three -year project, with Purgatory in 2026 and Paradiso in 2027. I already knew of the translation of Cannizzaro thanks to a book, a collection of articles that my father, Domenico Cicciò, wrote for the Gazzetta del Sud in the 60s. In one of these he tells of the five translations in Sicilian then existing. However, I had not deepened the topic and I am happy to be able to do it today because despite knowing the divine comedy well, thanks to three of my masters who made me love it, Vittorio Gassman, Paolo Giuranna and Sandro Lombardi, I did not imagine that the Sicilian language could return and sometimes enhance the theatricality and visionaryness of Dante. A poet who translates another poet, inevitably betrays him, reacts him, does it his own. And reading Cannizzaro’s triplets, you understand why Victor Hugo was his admirer ».
How is it to go back to work in your city?
«Since many years with Giancarlo Cobelli at Emilia Romagna Teatro, in Tuscany with Federico Tiezzi and then at the Teatro di Roma and the Piccolo in Milan with Massimo Peopolizio, I work mostly elsewhere with some details in Messina. But the emotion I always feel by acting in the theater of my city has no equal. I remember that when the theater of Messina in 2015 produced “She and her”, the show written with my brother Fausto, they trembled my hands for the whole time of the first representation to Vittorio Emanuele. Fortunately, I interpreted an elderly disguised alcoholic and therefore I used that fear to emphasize those outlets made on stiletto heels ».
How did you form the cast?
«By calling two friends of Messina actors that I admire and that I had already directed in the past, Eugenio Papalia and William Caruso. But here they are not only interpreters but with me they participate in the creative process. Then I wanted music on the live piano. I asked around, I was looking for excellence, and I found Marcello Conti, a young European Albummer musician who now lives in Brussels and is happy to play for the first time in a production of the theater in his city ».