It will be Paolo Jorio with his “La sirena di Posillipo” (ed. Rizzoli, 2024, 560 pp.) released on Tuesday 25 June in all the main Italian bookstores, to inaugurate the series of events scheduled for the 2024 edition of the cultural review Stories, Books and Cooking in Piazza Marina, in Barletta. The appointment with the author is on Tuesday 25 June at 8.45pm. The event is organized by the Piazza Marina cultural association and this year presents the inhabitants of the City of the Challenge with a program with six events. The volume written by Jorio is an exciting historical novel, which tells for the first time the life of Adriana Basile, an extraordinary opera singer who enchanted nobles, prelates and artists with her voice in the splendor of seventeenth-century Naples. A “first” on a national scale. For each event, entry will be free but curiosity will be mandatory. In conversation with the author, former journalist and radio host, founder of the Treasure Museum and director of the Filangieri Museum in Naples, there will be the editor Marco Garavaglia, former editorial consultant for Rcs Libri, Corriere della Sera, Mondadori, Rizzoli, Cairo .
The association thanks the Municipality of Barletta for sponsoring the initiative and the supporters who made it a reality: the main sponsor Banca Patrimoni Sella & Co.; Ancient Barletta Cuisine; Mondadori bookstore Barletta; Perina; Pasta Maffei; Arpex; Agritalia; Cofra; Ciemme; New and Best; Teknotrade; Cassander; Agricultural Plan; Intimissimi Barletta; Calzedonia Barletta.
“The mermaid of Posillipo” in a nutshell
December 1586. In the sublime setting of the Gulf of Posillipo, where the red of the lava meets the blue of the sea, Adriana Basile comes to light. Talent is a matter of blood, for the Basile family: Adriana, in fact, in addition to an uncommon beauty, very quickly reveals a voice capable of enchanting like the song of a siren, while her older brother, the introverted Giambattista, passes days writing, my head in the clouds. Seventeenth-century Naples, cradle of new arts and labyrinthine metropolis, is the perfect stage for both: Giambo inhabits the world of literature and carries the weight of an unspeakable secret; Adriana, strong-willed and determined to achieve glory, grows to become the singer most contested by the powerful of the time. But to disturb the score of her destiny comes Angela, an orphan entrusted to the nuns, who earns her living by singing in taverns. They couldn’t be more different, she and Adriana – brazen and carnal one, haughty and indecipherable the other -, but their shared talent for music will be the spark of a violent rivalry, which nothing will be able to stop. Between a miracle of the blood of San Gennaro and a singing competition on the occasion of the Piedigrotta festival, The Siren of Posillipo takes us on a journey between the Gonzaga courts and the Rome of the popes, in the most sordid brothels and on the most stupendous terraces of Naples, to tell us the story of a furious passion like only the love of art can generate. The authentic and unpublished portrait of Adriana Basile, a woman outside the box, capable of rewriting her own destiny, and of the imaginative world that inspired the immortal Cunto de li cunti.
Who is Paolo Jorio
Journalist and director, since 2003 he has been Director of the San Gennaro Treasure Museum for which he developed the construction and installation project. The successes of the treasure exhibitions he curated outside the Neapolitan city were extraordinary. In Rome in 2013 in the Foundation Museum entitled “The Treasure of Naples” and in 2014 “The Masterpieces of the Museum of San Gennaro” at the Musee Maillol in Paris. In the same year in Belo Horizonte he organized the exhibition “Barroco, Italy Brazil”. Author, director and presenter of numerous reports, television and Rai radio programs such as “Radiodue 3131” and “La topolino amaranto”, and of around 200 art documentaries for RAI, for the BBC, and for Channel Four with which he participated in international festivals. He has multiple art publications to his credit, a manual on radio journalism, and with the novel “Il filo di lana” published in 2011 by Tullio Pironti he won six literary prizes. Curator of many exhibitions, he has always considered the cultural promotion of his territory the essential driving force for the valorization of one of the most important heritages in the world.
Here are the next presentations on the calendar, all with an appointment at 8.45pm:
Friday 28 June – “On this Afghan night” by Pamela Ferlin;
Sunday 30 June – “The beautiful season” by Francesco Carofiglio (in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, near the Mondadori bookshop);
Thursday 4 July – “Frightening vegetable cuisine” by Fabiola Di Sotto;
Monday 8 July – “The song of fortune” by Chiara Bianchi;
Friday 12 July – Theatrical show “Trovati una sega”, by and with Antonello Taurino (Porta Marina);
Monday 24 June 2024
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