ROVIGO • Twenty years of experimentation at the Rovigo Opera Prima Festival: the event born in ’94 reaches its twentieth edition and thirty years since its foundation. Today the presentation to the press in Pescheria Nuova
Massimo Munaro, artistic coordinator of Opera Prima, states: “This year’s edition aims to offer spectators the opportunity to meet some masters of the national contemporary scene, who through their poetics have marked the experimentation of theatrical languages since the 90s to date. Some of them will present historical works at the Festival, others new productions. Alongside them, as always happens at Opera Prima, there will be younger artists, Italian and international, who the festival has supported in recent years”.
Opera Prima XX will allow the public and scholars to revisit some important works, which perhaps they had only heard about without having had the opportunity to see them. Among these, Jago by Roberto Latini, an award-winning actor and director who came to critical attention for the first time at Opera Prima in 1998 with this show; Theater to eat? undoubtedly the progenitor of the way of understanding and practicing the Teatro delle Ariette, which was presented for the first time at Opera Prima in 2001. Even more historic, the Quijote! of the Teatro Nucleo, a 1990 show, revived by the company this year for the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation. And then the Lemming Theater which reinterprets the creation, Cinque Sassi, which it presented in 1994 at the first edition of the Festival with L’urlo e altri falistre. The Lemming, who was the creator of Opera Prima, will also present his new production, Attorno a Troia_Troiane, at this year’s Festival. Among the historical groups, masque theater and Anagoor will also be present; while among the guests of the latest editions of the Festival, Giselda Ranieri, Sara Vilardo, the Italian-Danish Fabio Liberti, the American Joshua Monten, Collettivo Rosario, Psycodrummers and the Rovigo group Momec will return to celebrate the XX edition of Opera Prima. Like every year, the Festival will close with a concert: this year the Syrian-Palestinian pianist Aeham Ahmad, also known for his public performances in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, will return to Rovigo.
Pascarella will create a workshop on vision and the deepening of the gaze which will lead the young people to produce critical works on what is proposed by the Festival. The critical workshop is carried out in collaboration with the Liceo Paleocapa of Rovigo, within the project The Five Sensi of the Actor – the experimentation of the languages of the scene, winner of the FOR CHI CREA competition promoted by the MiC-Ministry of Culture and by SIAE.
Finally, as a corollary to the entire program, this year the Festival will also host a exhibition curated by Massimo Munaro, creator with Lemming of the first editions of the Festival, entitled “XX editions of Opera Primto. For the thirty years since its foundation”: a small collection of posters and brochures, of visual and sound testimonies, which speak of thirty years of theatrical experimentation in Italy and in this city.
Says Roberto Mazzoni, president of the Rovigo Cultura Foundation, “2024 marks the thirty-year anniversary of this initiative which has been able to renew itself in its twenty editions by making innovation its artistic signature. For some years Fondazione Rovigo Cultura has had the honor of promoting the Opera Prima Festival, a common thread, especially in this edition, between past, present and future; a Festival that moves souls and involves them without losing sight of the concreteness of the desire to network through collaboration with local productive realities or with the formation of a critical expression of young people with the involvement of the Paleocapa scientific high school, partner , this year, of the Festival.”
Like every year, the Festival will inhabit outdoor and indoor spaces of the city, such as the Teatro Studio, Cloister of the Olivetani, Giardini Due Torri, Underground of the Giardini due Torri, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, Gran Guardia, Piazza Garibaldi, Teatro Sociale, Piazza Annonaria, Pescheria Nuova, Cinema Teatro Duomo. The twentieth edition of Opera Prima will bring a total of 29 events to Rovigo for 5 days including meetings, debates, workshops, shows, concerts, films, transforming Rovigo once again into a lively place open to innovation and artistic experimentation.
“This twentieth edition opens up to new collaborations with the territory” states Marina Carluccio, president of the association. Opera Prima festival, “We thank the Cinema Teatro Duomo, with which we shared the programming of the film Todos los males by Anagoor, scheduled for Sunday 30 June; the Hops pub-brewery, with which we shared the after-festival programming; the Liceo Paleocapa of Rovigo, with which we will create a critical laboratory aimed at high school students in the city; Fiab, which again this year will make some bicycles available to the Festival, helping us to reduce the environmental impact of our activities”.
The Opera Prima XX Festival is organized by the Ass. Festival Opera Prima, in collaboration with the Teatro del Lemming and the Rovigo Cultura Foundation and with the support of the MiC-Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Rovigo and the Cariparo Foundation.
