“La Corte dei Miracoli” arrives in Messina, a tribute to Riccardo Cocciante’s masterpiece “Notre Dame de Paris”

Through a clever game of video mapping, lights and scenography, the show transforms the stage into a place suspended between dream and reality, where dance and music tell a story of love, courage and redemption. The show draws inspiration from the Gothic atmosphere of the Notre Dame cathedral and from the characters that populate not only the story of Victor Hugo, but also those rendered by Walt Disney’s animated films. The union of dance, music with live singing and images projected in mapping onto an imposing scenography creates a narrative structure that combines cinematographic and musical suggestions, with a contemporary look at the tradition of musical theatre. The viewer will be led into a world populated by iconic characters such as Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Frollo and Phoebus, whose plots are reinterpreted through choreography and sung narration. A new vision of the famous story where diversity finds its more current acceptance this time.

The “Marvan Company” born from the experience of Mariangela Bonanno, sets itself the objective of developing a new performative force through the search for a choreographic language based on the solid technique of its members and on the creativity of the choreographers who construct shows of great emotional impact.

The plot

In 1482 in Paris, judge Frollo, obsessed by the fear of the “different”, ambushes a group of gypsies, killing a woman in the act of protecting her deformed child. He is saved by the archdeacon of Notre-Dame who adopts the newborn – Quasimodo – and raises him, isolating him from the dangers inside the bell tower. As time passes, the child, who has become a boy, escapes his solitude by creating imaginary friendships with the stone statues of the cathedral, the gargoyles and the statuettes that he himself sculpts but, tired of that life, he decides to rebel against the isolation by participating in the “Festa dei Folli” in the square, among the people and street artists of gypsy origin; however during the event he is mocked by the people for his deformity and suffers the humiliating coronation as “King of Fools”. Only the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda moves to pity him but is opposed by Frollo, who hates his lineage, thus finding herself forced to take refuge in the cathedral where she will find comfort in a pagan prayer and in the sincere friendship of Quasimodo who falls in love with her. The captain of the guard Febo, under Frollo’s orders, refuses to arrest the young girl who was requesting asylum, arousing the anger of the Judge who is troubled by a morbid obsession for the girl who manages to escape with the help of Quasimodo. Frollo, enraged, unleashes a ruthless hunt against Esmeralda and all the gypsies, promising to find them wherever they take refuge. Phoebus rebels against this act and is wounded during his mutiny but Esmeralda saves his life with a talisman and leads him to safety inside the cathedral. Here Quasimodo intercepts the complicity that has arisen between the two, drawing first a great sadness but finally a sense of hope for the future in which something can happen for him too.
Esmeralda is reunited with her people in a hideout called “The Court of Miracles”. Quasimodo, fearing that Frollo will find the gypsies, tries to warn them by anticipating the guards. But once he reaches his destination he falls into the trap set by the judge which triggers a fight between soldiers and gypsies. Esmeralda is condemned to the stake, accused of witchcraft, but Quasimodo saves her by provoking a revolt of the people led by Phoebus. Frollo tries to kill both but succumbs in the struggle surrounded by the fire he set. Once the battle is over, Quasimodo accepts the love between Phoebus and Esmeralda and is finally welcomed by all the celebrating people. Here, during a circus act, he glimpses a fascinating tightrope walker with whom a tender relationship will then arise in the jubilation of a liberated Paris.