Tomorrow evening, at the Arena Shakespeare of Teatro Due, the national preview of «Viva la Costituzione» will be performed, a monologue, produced by Loft and distributed by Epochè ArtEventi, in which the journalist, writer and television host Luca Sommi retraces the history of our fundamental charter, reflecting on its beauty and criticizing the reforms – especially the one on the so-called premiership proposed by the Meloni government – that aim to overturn it. «The show wants to encourage you to read or reread that extraordinary text – Sommi points out – which is the fruit of many different cultures: in fact, lay people and Catholics, monarchists and republicans, socialists and liberals sat in the Constituent Assembly. The narration starts in 1947, but looks back to Pericles, the Enlightenment, the great revolutions of the eighteenth century, Marx and Tolstoy. I will tell, also aided by evocative musical pieces and the projection of paintings, the centuries-old path that underlies the ideas contained in the articles, the true miracles that have brought the intuitions of Petrarca, Dante, but also of the entire history of Italian art, from Giotto to Caravaggio, into the present. It is truly “the most beautiful”, as the title of my latest book says, because, in the space of a night, it has transformed us from subjects of a monarchy into citizens, holders of rights».
Rights – such as the right to vote – that, however, seventy years later, we risk taking for granted. “The provisions of the Constitution, in order to be fulfilled, must be applied in ordinary laws, but politics often does not conform to the text of the fundamental charter and so, little by little, the social pact has broken. The rulers, instead of helping to relieve fears, fuel them and the people respond by deserting the polls and, in fact, disavowing the institutions”.
Institutions represented then, in the Constituent Assembly, by exceptional personalities. «In the show I quote the president of the Assembly, Umberto Terracini, who spent more than six thousand days in prison under fascism. When they asked Pertini for a geometric shape to define it, he replied: “A straight line” to indicate its profound coherence. But I also investigate the constituent mothers, such as Nilde Iotti or Teresa Noce, because the Constitution and the Republic are, not only grammatically, feminine entities: in ’46 women contributed with their first vote to the defeat of the monarchy and the opening of an unprecedented horizon of freedom and equality.”
The Constitution has a temporal and historical dimension, but also a spatial one, and should be inhabited as a place: it is no coincidence that Calamandrei, in a famous speech to Milanese students, invited people to go to the mountains to fully understand the climate that gave birth to it. “If I could read it publicly in three places – continues Sommi – I would do it at the Cisa pass, the pass that unites two regions that were protagonists of the Resistance. Then in Piazza Duomo, in Milan, because I would like those words to resonate as powerfully as the verses of a rock song, and finally in Rome, in Piazza Venezia, to forcefully reaffirm the anti-fascist soul of our Republic”.
The constitutional text is a clockwork device in which every single term is chosen with extreme care. «For war, the verb condemn or refuse is not used, but the strongest of all, “repudiate”. Furthermore, the Constitution “recognizes” rights, implying that these are intrinsic qualities in man. In article 1 we then talk about “Italy” not the Italian state, thus including all individuals, of course, but also the seas, the mountains, inventiveness, art, history: our entire cultural and environmental identity ».
The premiere of the show also coincides with the conclusion of the Dedalo festival, conceived and curated by Sommi himself: «The event was born last year as a challenge and has become a much-appreciated event: Parma responded in an extraordinary way and it was wonderful to see Piazza Garibaldi packed with citizens interested in important issues such as the war in Ukraine and Gaza, journalism, justice and literature».
Filippo Marazzini
