THE EAGLE – ‘Paolina Giorgi’ told by Errico Centofanti – “A beautiful, young, intelligent, elegant and famous woman, on a January afternoon in 1911, entered one of the fashionable places in Genoa and was murdered there by a rejected lover. She would have turned 28 in a few days. It is the most sensational femicide of the Italian Belle Epoque, reported for days and days by all the national newspapers. Who was Pauline? Where did she come from? What story behind her”?
A question that sounds like an invitation. It is written on the poster of the show ‘Paolina’ by Errico Centofanti which will be staged on Saturday 4 May at ‘Spazio Rimediato’, starting at 9pm.
“I was a child when I met her. A child – says Centofanti – as curious as all children, perhaps a little more so. She smiled at me, from that portrait of her that shines among the tombs in the cemetery, where she and my mother went for formal visits to grandparents and so on.
I asked who that beautiful lady was, but my mother, always generous in teaching and explaining, was reticent. She changed when I reached her age which seemed the right one for me to be able to fully understand the meaning of what she finally wanted to tell me about Paolina.
The light of that face, its grace, that sweetly haughty look, that deep connection with the mystery of reality, gave rise to my desire to know more.
So, after a century of impudent silence from the community, at the beginning of 2008 I published the first results of my research in archives and libraries across half of Italy. In reality, the monologue was the first to be printed and only now has it become a real spectacle.
However, Paolina is a universe that has not yet been explored enough: research continues, not only on my part; finally others also contribute to drawing new features of the story that concerns Paolina and not only her”.
‘Paolina’ by Errico Centofanti
Direction and scenography by Fabrizio Pompei
Costumes Iaia Centofanti
Gemma Maria La Cecilia is Paolina
with Elena Floris on the violin
Music by Gustav Mahler and traditional ones developed by Elena Floris
