As part of the initiatives of the first edition of the recognition, which will see 35 young professionals arrive in Trani for the award ceremony, at 7.30 pm on Friday 24 May, at the Bethel Center Hall, in Piazza Plebiscito n.16/a, it will scene “Giustina’s fortress”. The show, born within the Giustina Rocca Project and inspired by the life of the jurist from Trani, is a Marluna Teatro production, text and direction by Arianna Gambaccini, with the interpreters Elisabetta Aloia, Arianna Gambaccini and Maria Elena Germinario, sets and lights by Gianluigi Bacon and egg. Entrance ticket info at the number: 3402326032 or by clicking the link https://www.diyticket.it/events/Teatro/17204/la-rocca-di-giustina-trani-biglietti
The play evokes the extraordinary figure of a woman and jurist, endowed with great auctoritas, as reported in Cesare Lambertini’s De iure patronatus, called to resolve an inheritance dispute between two of her nephews. On April 8, 1500, Giustina pronounced the sentence of this arbitration in the court building of Trani in the vulgar language (not in Latin), in order to be understood by the large audience of fellow citizens, and, for the office performed, demands and she obtained that she was paid the same third of the compensation established for male referees. Daughter of Horace, orator in the Senate of Naples, and wife of Giovanni Antonio Palagano, Royal Captain of the city of Trani, Rocca also inspired the character of Portia di Belmonte in the play The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare and to her, in 2019, the tallest tower of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg was named after him, as well as two streets in Trani and Bari and a school in his city (the epitaph for his premature death is preserved in the diocesan museum of Trani of his daughter Cornelia). Furthermore, in the European Perpetual Calendar on Gender Equality (Gender equality perpetual calendar), an entry on Giustina Rocca was inserted on 8 April (day of the arbitration award).
Central figure in the diplomatic relations between her Trani and Venice, Giustina Rocca on stage is an intense Elisabetta Aloia who interprets a tight and engaging text by the playwright Arianna Gambaccini. Maria Elena Germinario and the director and author Gambaccini herself are admirable actresses in the guise of the Fates, Clotho and Atropos. To magnify the development of the dramaturgy, the scenes and lights by Gianluigi Carbonara. A 65-minute continuum that keeps the audience captivated.
Everything takes place the day before the arbitration award is pronounced. In the show, in fact, Giustina, the unaware incarnation of the Lachesi parca, on the night between 7 and 8 April 1500 is consumed by a dilemma: to go and get the doge’s blessing in Venice and also become ambassador for the city of Trani, or choose the role of arbitrator to rule on an award involving two of his nephews? What service is higher and more useful to humanity? How will the two fates bring Lachesis back to her job, that of holding up the rock of life, without humanity stopping being born, growing and dying in the world?
“La Rocca di Giustina” tells of how, at times, the story is written unconsciously by its protagonists, who with the typical attitude of the concreteness of female actions arrange today, decreeing the law on tomorrow.