BRINDISI – This year the “Marzolla” high school proposed the Euripidean Alcestis, at the conclusion of the “Gruppo Teatro” workshop which took place during the school year. Directed by professors Elisabetta Carluccio and Maria Diletta Martucci. In the auditorium of the high school, institutional greetings from the manager, Carmen Taurino, followed by a speech from the manager of the Ust Territorial Area of Brindisi, Angela Tiziana Di Noia. Exquisite guests Anna D’Agnano (Arpa) and Maria Giovanna Natali (Anpal), as well as the many family members and friends of the student actors, who are part of the Marzolla Theater Group, coordinated by teachers Martucci and Carluccio.
It was classic direction with the choir and everyone was assigned a character. Thanatos, death, was played by a woman; coryphea a teacher, Daniela Franco. All in the tradition, the only element of modernity was Puccini’s music on the centenary of his death, because the common thread that connects Alcestis to Puccini’s heroines is death for the love of those you love.
In the prologue, Apollo narrates that he was condemned by Zeus to serve as a slave in the house of Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, to atone for the guilt of having killed the Cyclopes who were in turn guilty of having manufactured the thunderbolts, with which Zeus himself had killed Asclepius, the son of Apollo. Apollo, welcomed kindly by Admetus, to demonstrate his gratitude, asks the Fates that the king can escape Thanatos, on the condition that someone dies in his place. In the show Thanatos, death is represented by a woman and the chorus is made up of citizens of Pherae and not old men.
The tragedy was divided into eight scenes, which were followed by arias from Puccini’s most significant operas. Alcestis receives his life as a gift again, as a reward for his extreme gesture of renouncing his own life. To crown the suggestiveness of the scenes, Puccini’s music, performed acoustically by the ensemble of the “Durano” musical high school directed by professor Antonio Bagnato. The sets, however, were curated by Professor Barbara Arrigo, teacher of the “Simone” art high school.
Here are the actors: Alcesti, Sofia Masi; Handmaid, Caroline Pratley; Apollo, Federico Greco; Thanatos, Eleonora Cazzorla; Corifea, Daniela Franco; Admeto, Antonio Sergio Marelli; Eracle, Antonio Francesco De Marco; Ferete, Nicolò La Grua; Son, Antonio Paolo Petrosino; Servant, Gianpaolo Pierri. Finally the Chorus, who commented on the various passages of the drama.
A work of many hands and the result of a fruitful collaboration between the different souls of the Brindisi three-year high schools of the “Marzolla Leo Simone Durano” high school complex, “Alcesti” was therefore on stage on Thursday 6 May 2024. First show at 5.30pm, second at 7.30pm in “Cinzia Zonno” auditorium. As Doctor Di Noia recalled, the classical world always nourishes human values, which Marzolla cultivates with various initiatives, from the Certamen Brundisinum to the theatre, as happened with “Alcestis”.
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