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After a year’s break, the Historical Reenactment Parade of the Liberation returns to Tropea, now in its eleventh edition. The appointment is for Sunday 23 August, with a spectacular route that will cross some of the most significant places in the village, transforming the historic center into a large open-air stage.
Promoted by the municipal administration of Tropea, in collaboration with the Pro Loco and various technical and artistic partners, including Compagnia Teatrale BA17, Calabria Tribù and Beroe Edizioni, the event was created with the aim of bringing back to the center the memory of the city and the values that the history of the Liberation of 1615 continues to transmit. A collective story that this year will involve artists, historical groups, professionals, citizens and the public in an immersive experience designed for all generations.
The artistic direction is entrusted to Angelica Artemisia Pedatella who has created a traveling formula in which theatre, music, historical fencing, costumes and flags intertwine along a single narrative path.
«This new edition of the historical reenactment parade is significant for Tropea. Preserving the memory of the community is one of the programmatic points of our administrative project and, as we announced, we are also restructuring the cultural system for transmitting events that have a significant collective value, such as the story of the redemption of the city in 1615. An important moment in which Tropea demonstrated its historical maturity, from the point of view of legality and social unity. Values that we still intend to promote today by making them public heritage” underlines the mayor Giovanni Macrì.
The historical parade thus represents the noble Tropea, of values and memory. «We intend to truly involve everyone: communities, tourists and families, because remembering what Tropea was means continuing to make it a source of pride for the future. History is everyone’s business and the arts can and must contribute to making historical memory the heritage of a community on the move, projected towards growth and development. In fact, we welcome every voice capable of making a significant contribution to the community project that we have chosen to build and for which we assume civil and moral responsibility” he continues.
A choice also shared by Pedatella, leading the group in charge of developing the artistic project, who explains: «We transformed the Parade into a great traveling show with performance appointments along a circular route». The objective, he adds, is to build «a great choral story capable of making citizens and visitors feel part of the history of the city. To also involve children, thus interpreting the feeling of the Administration which is aiming for a social project to redevelop the city, we also created the comic strip of the Liberation of Tropea”.
The event will start at 5pm in Piazza del Cannone, and then develop through the village with a succession of moments of entertainment: theatrical performances, performances by the Pistonieri Santa Maria del Rovo and over one hundred figures in historical clothes, historical fencing and music embellished by the debut of the Itinerant Lyrical Choir. The evening will end with the performance of the flag-wavers and musicians “Il Palio del Principe di Bisignano”.
«We are putting our heart into it and Tropea is giving us its heart», comments Pedatella. «It is an honor to work here today. This event is part of the “Calabrian Renaissance” project that we are carrying out with the BA17 Company team to artistically revitalize the places in the area and encourage the dissemination and knowledge of the complex and fascinating identity of Calabria, of which Tropea is undoubtedly a very important standard-bearer” he adds.
The Liberation of Tropea thus returns to represent not only a moment of shared memory, but also an opportunity to reread history through the language of the arts and the participation of the community, remembering, as highlighted by the motto of this edition, that “The memory of a people is its freedom”.