A proud and determined woman, not a victim of events, but capable of influencing facts to change their course. This is the feminine that through cinematographic representation and the strength of opera the eighth Messina Film Festival Cinema & Opera, directed by Ninni Panzerareminded the large audience who followed the event, since the inauguration at the Accascina Regional Museum, with the exhibition of the jewels of the Crotone goldsmith Gerardo Sacco directed by Franco Zeffirelli, demonstrating how opera can be a pop art, of great representative and expressive impact, accessible to all, in its ability to stage human feelings, from the most noble to the most violent and destructive.
Narrating cinema’s relationship with illustrious composers such as Mascagni, Puccini and Verdi, through special events and screenings of old and new films taken from their works, at the Sala Laudamo, the Festival put the spotlight on women, violence and gender inequality , on the resurgences of patriarchy that today more than ever pollute relations between the sexes. The woman and her history therefore, in the social and private sphere, up to the much applauded closing event, yesterday, at the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele with the reading «Dangerous Relationships», conceived by Elena Marazzita for Aida Studio Produzioni and written by Debora Pioli with Marco Voleri’s mise-en-scéne.
The play rereads «Cavalleria Rusticana», the famous work by Pietro Mascagni – set in the post-Unification of Italy Vizzini (Catania) and based on the novel of the same name by Giovanni Verga – from the perspective of Santuzza, the woman used by Turiddu to annoy Lola , his betrothed, before leaving as a soldier. TO the icon of Italian cinema Stefania Sandrelli will give her voice, accompanied by the soprano Daria Masiero and the pianist Rocco Roca Rey, who alternate the actress’s acting with the music of the great composer from Livorno. A character, that of Santuzza, certainly not passive, but endowed with strength and determination, who lives the pride of wounded love not seeking revenge, but justice.
«Santuzza wants justice, like many women today – Sandrelli tells us –. We don’t need revenge, but justice, which is a broader concept. And today we would need a lot of it, for the many women victims of violence; Unfortunately, something often remains empty, poorly rooted in facts.”
Speaking of Santuzza’s proud pride, the spontaneous reference is to another rebellious Sicilian, Agnese Ascalone, played by the great actress sixty years ago, in 1964, in the cult «Seduced and abandoned» by Pietro Germi, set in Sciacca (Agrigento) . A memory present in her mind because it was the film that took her to Sicily for the first time, making her discover a very different world from the one described through stereotypes and clichés, but above all special and modern women: «When they told me that I had to come to Sicily, I thought the Sicilians were behind, but instead they were crazy. They were very forward, with a great sense of humor. I have cultivated friendships ever since with great joy. Even regarding the famous bikini from the film, which was mine, I thought they would take me for a stripper but instead they were ready like me. They had understood this change, even if they couldn’t go outside certain parameters, exaggerate, they had to keep their heads down to avoid being labeled as no good.”
And Santuzza, is she ahead of her time too?
«Santuzza is very natural, as she is, she doesn’t enter roles or move because she is allowed to exit or enter situations: she is herself, with her authentic nature». The play, in fact, goes beyond the scheme of the adulterous triangle so dear to bourgeois drama, because it contains an important work on women: there is the strength of an internal tragedy, which leaves no escape and represents, without possible solutions or accommodations, the lacerations of a chauvinist mentality that is sadly still alive today.
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