“Dante in Puglia”, stop in Barletta for the students of the “Léontine and Giuseppe De Nittis”

When it is said that the Divine Comedy has a lot to do with the origins of the Italian identity, we must also consider the assumption from a “physical” point of view and imagine that the work flourishes from a multifaceted territory, which is our country. , and that a man on a journey, Dante Alighieri, with his load of disappointments and bitterness, is plowing through it as an exile, looking for interlocutors who will once again recognize his dignity and value. There is no part of the peninsula that cannot lend its landscapes to the Opera Somma. Let us then take the rocky land of the Gargano, with its deep cavities, so similar to the infernal abysses described by Dante; let’s take the Umbrian Forest, dark and desolate (when the tourists thin out in the evening) as the forest in which one happens to get lost: and here we are born Dante in Puglia, an audiovisual trilogy dedicated to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, which celebrates Dante on the occasion of the recent seventh centenary of his death, but also recovers the memory of the great Nicola Zingarelli, father of the vocabulary of the Italian language, one hundred years after his first appearance for the types of the Milanese house Bietti and Reggiani. From Puglia, from Cerignola, Nicola Zingarelli deeply loved the Divine Comedy to the point of collecting over three thousand printed editions, today preserved in the La Magna Capitana Library in Foggia.

The idea of Dante in Puglia was born from the creative talent of Danilo Audielloin art Alexis Arts, on the initiative of the Regional Council of Puglia and its president Loredana Capone, who wanted to promote the Apulian territory by sponsoring a Dante-esque journey to the most evocative natural and cultural places of our region: from the Castellana caves, to the Umbrian Forest, to Castel del Monte , the well-known fortress built by Frederick II whom Dante imagined among the heretics of the sixth circle, passing through sunny Molfetta and the Bari seafront. And, in every place, an important interview: the reasoning on Dante and Zingarelli develops, in fact, through a semi-serious dialogue with famous minds of science, philosophy, music and entertainment, in some way linked to Puglia: Mogol , a myth of Italian song that has always sought the right combination of music, words and meanings, just as Dante pursued musicality in the divine formation of his verses; Caparezza and his passion, transformed into a curious rap piece, for Filippo Argenti, Dante’s hated enemy; Luciano Canfora with his passionate reflections on civil commitment, as it was and as it is today; the imitator Stefano Bucci, an artist from Foggia, with “over a hundred voices”; up to Maria Felicia De Laurentis, the scientist who, first, photographed a black hole, giving us a wonderful image of the mysteries of the cosmos, and of those stars with which Dante concludes each of his canticles.

The originality of the operation is also in the illusionism tricks that pepper each interview, enhanced by the use of digital. In his story, Danilo Audiello, creator of the project and scientific communicator, holder of seven Guinness World Records, uses these effects with great mastery, adding amazement to the exploration of text that never ceases to enchant us. His Academy of Magic & Sciencesupported by the University of Cambridge, practices the Creative Learning at high levels, using playful-creative elements to disseminate quality educational content.

The Puglia Regional Council offered twenty-four high schools across the entire Puglia area the opportunity to participate in the screening of the show free of charge. For the city of Barletta, 600 students from the “Léontine and Giuseppe De Nittis” Institute were included, representing whom, the director Antonio Francesco Diviccaro requested, in support of the initiative, the institutional patronage of the municipality of Barletta, to the certain civic and cultural value of the event. The collaboration of the De Nittis Institute with Danilo Audiello is not new: the artist, in fact, was a guest at the third edition of the Wannà – Festival of young politicsorganized by the Institute.

On Tuesday 16 April, in the Manfredi room of the Cinema Paolillo in Barletta, the De Nittis students were able to watch the first episode of the audiovisual series, Hell, experimenting with an original, certainly more immersive way of approaching the greatest masterpiece of all time, which does not fail to fascinate even the youngest. The councilor for culture Oronzo Cilli, present at the event, showed considerable interest in the new form of cultural dissemination presented to the students of the De Nittis institute.

At the end of the screening, illusionism crossed the screen, dragging the room into a whirlwind of “magical effects” and empathic irony, with which Danilo Audiello demonstrated his ability to amaze and entertain.