«This show doesn’t want to persuade anyone, it just wants to say that we are the children of events, but also those responsible for the present. In every moment, in every choice, in every silence, as in every word, each of us decides the meaning of our own life and that of others.”
The actress Antonella Questa and the “narrator” Luca Scarlini they concluded with this warning The mockery, the dinner: a duel of words. Sem Benelli, Giacomo Matteotti, Benito Mussolini, which took place last night, Monday 10 June, in the Sala Bisaglia of the Cen.Ser. of Rovigo.
The show was chosen by Musikethe music, theater and dance festival promoted and organized by Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo Foundationto commemorate Giacomo Matteotti on the day of centenary of his assassination.
Antonella Questa And Luca Scarlini have reconstructed from an original perspective one of the darkest pages of our recent history, intertwining the story of the tragic death of the socialist deputy with the story of the biographical story of the writer and playwright Sem Benelli.
Elected to Parliament from an independent list, theJune 11, 1924 Sem Benelli, who was the most successful Italian playwright in the world at the time, gives a fiery speech against the horrendous murder of Giacomo Matteotti. And Mussolini takes revenge: from that moment Benelli’s life, fame and work will be under attack. His works are boycotted by the regime press, his premieres are object of contestation by rowdy fascists, expressly sent by the Ministry of Propaganda. From the rich man he had become, Benelli becomes poor again. At 52 he enlisted as a “volunteer” for the war in Ethiopia, to make himself more acceptable to the regime.
The words that Benelli spoke in 1947 in Prato, on the occasion of the performance of his drama Fear, introduced the large audience present last night at the Cen.Ser. in the heart of a horrendous and terrible Italy, which at the time of the events did not seem to realize that it was so:
«I haven’t been from my city for many years, I represent a new work of mine: “Paura”. It talks about me, about the fear that all those who didn’t like the past regime had to suffer. He speaks for all those who have always had to swallow bitter things, who have had their aspirations and hopes stolen from them».
And again from Benelli are the words that Antonella Questa and Luca Scarlini chose as the epilogue of his story:
«Fascism did not allow those who opposed it to emerge. I didn’t want to adapt, I deluded myself that fascism could only last a short time: instead it lasted more than twenty years. It seems like yesterday that he reached the highest peaks of general enthusiasm; but I, still hoping for its end, persisted; and so now that Italy is free I am unknown and sick to boot… I am sick with fear, fear of publishing what I wrote in the fascist time and which fascism would not have allowed me to publish».
The show brings onto the scene, together with Benelli, all the other characters of the story, introduced by Luca Scarlini in the role of omniscient narrator and interpreted with a variety of accents and moods by Antonella Questa. Starting with Benito Mussolini, whose vulgarity is equal to the perfidy of a failed novelist, unlikely poet and actor like Nero, who by sabotaging Benelli imposed his ferocious power on the art world; to continue with Amerigo Dumini, the never repentant and unpunished leader of the fascist squad that kidnapped and killed Matteotti; In the end, Giovacchino Forzanoextraordinary librettist for Puccini, but at the same time, out of greed and opportunism, author of texts that were questionable and mediocre for the Duce.
In the background, an Italy steeped in macho and misogynistic rhetoric, where the role of women is reduced to a mere mother of the country’s children, as in the grotesque commercials with which Questa and Scarlini mimic fascist propaganda: Pasta Balilla; Robur toothpaste; Dura Lex, the phallic correspondence degree course; the “campaign for the radical belligerence of the average inept Italian male”, which can also count on the Benito Virilon pill, against shyness, impotence and homosexuality. It is the Italy of the Rocco Code, of honor killing, of rape as an authorized and encouraged instrument of torture: a country of intellectuals put in the pillory and of oceanic crowds of supporters, sympathizers and associates ready to follow every whim of the “son of century”.
A country to beware of and which must not return, as Sem Benelli already warned in his speech in Parliament: «Unworthy is the desire of a single man to become emperor and tyrant. Terrible is the blindness of men who do not understand the abyss we are falling into. Pity for the tormented Italy, pity for Giacomo Matteotti and his family, the coming years will be as terrible as the ones, of lead and blood, that we live in today».
Musike is an event promoted and organized by
Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo Foundation
Artistic programming and coordination
Alessandro Zattarin
