VARESE – After the opening of the exhibition dedicated to Monsignor Manfredini, the second appointment of San Vittore Festival is scheduled Friday 3 May at 9pm at the Basilica of San Vittore. The event, with free entry, will be dedicated to Italo Calvino and Cottolengo: the story of a changing meeting.
Reading in the Basilica
Will be Andrea Chiodiaccompanied by the notes of Ferdinando Baroffio (in the photo below), to read some pages of “The day of a scrutineer”, a thoughtful and painful short novel by Italo Calvino which took ten years to create – from ’53 to ’63 – and which shows all the symptoms of a crisis on various fronts, one of which is that of the author’s political commitment. Calvino (1923-1985) is one of the most read Italian writers of the 20th century: his texts, including “Marcovaldo”, “The nonexistent knight”, “The baron in the trees” and “The path of the spider’s nests”, are very well known and offered in schools. Member of the Communist Party, from which he resigned after the events in Budapest, in the 1961 local elections he was appointed scrutineer at the Cottolengo in Turina huge shelter for the disabled, handicapped, deformed, people that no one wants to see and who are welcomed and assisted by a group of nuns.
The day of a scrutineer
From that experience, made up of great emotions and discoveries, was born the idea of writing the novel “The day of a scrutineer”. It is not difficult to recognize in Amerigo Ormea, the protagonist of the novel, Calvino himself. Amerigo is an intellectual who believes he knows and has already understood everything about life, but in the face of that wounded yet welcomed humanity, his certainties and certainties begin to falter, first of all that on the value of existence. Is a man valid because he is perfect, efficient, capable or because he belongs to God who, with his free grace and love, can save the lives of those deformed bodies? From that meeting Amerigo understands that his outlook on life and his relationship with himself and with others are not fully authentic and decides to welcome that news. His life is reborn thanks to an encounter, as can happen to anyone.
The protagonists
Andrea Chiodi, from Varese, student of Piera Degli Esposti, graduated in law with a thesis on Greek tragedy under the guidance of Eva Cantarella. He is one of the most established Italian directors of the new generation. His collaborations are numerous in Italy and abroad. He is a teacher at the Verona Opera Academy, at the Scuola del Teatro Stabile del Veneto and at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano. Since 2010 he has been the creator and artistic director of the Festival Tra Sacro e Sacro Monte.
Ferdinando Baroffio, born in Tradate in 1964, began studying piano at the age of eight to graduate from the Verdi Conservatory in Milan. He carries out concert activity in Italy and abroad, playing both as a soloist and in chamber ensembles. He is the founder of the Trio Estense (with instrumentalists from the Teatro alla Scala). He wrote the music for the evening event for the celebration of the anniversary of the Italian Constitution in Florence broadcast on Rai1.
andrea calvino varese nails – MALPENSA24
