The Taormina Arte 2026 International Festival, with the artistic direction of Simona Celi Zanetti, offers a new appointment at the Ancient Theater of Taormina.
On Monday 10 August at 9.00 pm, “Beyond the Pillars of Hercules – Guide to the journey from Chopin to Stevenson” (Savà Produzioni Creative) will be staged at the Ancient Theater, with the magnetic interpretation of Valeria Solarino, one of the most appreciated Italian actresses and the piano of the internationally renowned concert pianist Gloria Campaner.
The show
The show travels along the paths suggested by the poets who made travel a literary genre. The words will dialogue with the music, immersing the audience in the transparent and aquatic atmospheres of Debussy, in the delicacy of John Field’s nocturnes and in the raging wind of some of Chopin’s preludes. The journey will meet Baudelaire, for whom leaving is an incessant search for another dimension, Whitman, who makes it a possibility of knowledge and falling in love, Stevenson, poet of travel par excellence, and again Cendrars and Emily Dickinson, until arriving at the archetype of the journey told in the Odyssey, where the shipwrecked hero, after much wandering, is reunited with himself only once he returns home.
Alongside the journey of Ulysses told by Homer, there is also space for that of Dante’s Ulysses, who, unlike the Homeric hero, once returned is not satisfied with the return and decides to set off to sea again together with his companions, pushing beyond the Pillars of Hercules towards borders that no one had ever dared to cross, “to follow virtue and knowledge”.
Valeria Solarino’s voice and Gloria Campaner’s piano will accompany the audience on this journey between literature and music, built around the theme of travel and knowledge.
Tickets are available on the TicketOne and BoxOffice Sicilia circuits.