Lezioni di Storia

After the success of last Season, “Lezioni di Storia” returns to the Donizetti Theater with an unprecedented program of five meetings on the theme of “Rebels,” which focus on the thought and action of some great figures of the past and are meant to be an exhortation to cultivate hope for change that is always possible.

The Donizetti Theater Foundation is pleased to present a new series of meetings dedicated to History, which we are sure will arouse the interest of teachers. After the success of last Season, “Lessons in History” returns to the Donizetti Theater with an unprecedented program of five meetings on the theme of “Rebels,” which focus on the thought and action of some great figures of the past and are meant to be an exhortation to cultivate hope for change that is always possible. In times of uncertainty and war such as the ones we are experiencing, reconstructing the thought and action of some great figures of the past is meant to be an exhortation to cultivate hope for change that is always possible. From the Roman Empire to our own years, carried by the hand through the centuries, so many have discovered why an episode even distant in time explains our present and provides answers to the need for memory. Rebels
History involves long seasons of continuity and sudden ruptures. Often the latter are facilitated, if not triggered, by the actions of a few individual men and women who, by challenging customs, mentalities, and rules, open new horizons of possibility. To the rebels who succeeded in radically changing the course of events, to those who tried and to those who imagined different paths from those beaten up to that moment, this cycle of History Lessons is dedicated: a cycle of five appointments that will feature authoritative and passionate speakers, known to audiences of the most important Italian theaters.
Rebels is the title of the new edition of History Lessons to be held at the Donizetti Theater from January 18 to March 1, 2025. Opening the cycle will be theologian Vito Mancuso with the lecture Jesus: the Breaking of the Law. On February 1 it will be the turn of Francesca Cenerini who will talk about the figure of Cleopatra and the influence Egyptian culture had on the taste of the Romans. The following Sunday Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli will take the stage to recount the historical figure, charisma and complex personality of Joan of Arc: a woman in arms. On Feb. 15 Luigi Mascilli Migliorini will offer a profound reflection on Robespierre, at the heart of the revolution, while to close, on March 1 Loris Zanatta will present Fidel Castro and his revolutionary “political religion.”

All meetings will be held at the Donizetti Theater.

ENCOUNTERS: REBELS

Vito Mancuso, theologian, philosopher and academic
Did Jesus explicitly intend to break with the Law? Yes and no. Yes, because he was executed for his harsh contestation of religious tradition and his proclamation of the kingdom of God in radical opposition to the powers of this world. No, because his rebellion was the result of a deeper obedience. Which one? To whom, to what?
Vito Mancuso is an Italian theologian. He has taught Modern and Contemporary Theology at San Raffaele University in Milan and was a lecturer in History of Theological Doctrines at the University of Padua. He currently teaches the master’s degree in Meditation and Neuroscience at the University of Udine. He has been a columnist for the daily newspaper “La Stampa” since 2022. His most successful books translated into other languages include: The Soul and its Destiny (Raffaello Cortina, 2007), God and I. A guide of the perplexed (Garzanti, 2011), The passion principle. The force that drives us to love (Garzanti 2013), God and His Destiny (Garzanti 2015). His latest publications are The Mind in Love and Ethics for Difficult Days, both published by Garzanti.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
1 hour January 18, 2024 11 a.m. Donizetti Theater 10€ based on theater availability

Francesca Cenerini teaches Roman History and Epigraphy and Roman Institutions at the University of Bologna
The last queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty arrives in the Urbe for the first time and stays in Caesar’s villa. The history of Rome in those years intersects not only with the destinies of Egypt but also with the histories of Palestine, Africa, and Asia. It begins a season that will have enormous impact on the culture and tastes of the Romans.
Francesca Cenerini is a professor of Roman History and Roman Epigraphy and Institutions at the University of Bologna. She has directed and directs her studies in the field of Ancient History. Her research interests are directed in particular to the representation of the female condition in the Roman age, through the analysis of historiographic and epigraphic documentation. Research has produced two monographs and numerous articles published in journals and essays in volumes. She has been involved in many initiatives aimed at public communication of her research, collaborating with high-profile journals and cultural initiatives. In particular, she participated in the October 2021 Lezioni di Storia Festival in Naples. She is the author of The Roman Woman. Models and realities (The Mill, 2013), Divas and women. Wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of Roman emperors from Augustus to Commodus. (Angelini Photo Publisher, 2009).
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
1 hour February 1, 2024 11 a.m. Donizetti Theater 10€ based on theater availability

Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli taught Medieval History, History of Cities and History
and Cultural Heritage of Fashion at the University of Bologna.
She is a girl, but fights like a man; she is a Christian virgin, but wears men’s clothes; she feels a direct relationship with God, but does not recognize the mediation of the Church. Revered as a saint, she has become a myth, and not only for the French. Many questions remain, however, about this young woman in arms who was burned at the stake at age 19.
Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli has taught Medieval History, History of Cities and History and Cultural Heritage of Fashion at the University of Bologna. She works on the history of mentality and society. Among her publications: Fishers of men. Preachers and squares at the end of the Middle Ages. (2005); An Italian at the Court of France. Christine de Pizan intellectual and woman (new edition 2017); Covered head. Stories of women and veils (new 2018 edition); The rules of luxury. Appearances and everyday life from the Middle Ages to the modern age. (2020). Per Laterza è autrice di In the hands of women. Feeding, healing, poisoning from the Middle Ages to the present. (2013) e Mothers, missed mothers, almost mothers. Six medieval stories (2021).
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
1 hour February 8, 2024 11 a.m. Donizetti Theater 10€ based on theater availability

Luigi Mascilli Migliorini teaches modern history at L’Orientale University in Naples.
The well-behaved lawyer of a provincial town is a symbol of the French Revolution, its illusions, its horrors. We do not know when the uneasiness of a bourgeois soul manifested itself in an “incorruptibility” later embodied in the sacred principles of a Revolution, despite itself, inevitably destined to corrupt itself.
Luigi Mascilli Migliorini is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, former president of SISEM and professor of modern history at L’Orientale University. He is one of the leading scholars of the Napoleonic age and the Restoration in Europe, to whom he has dedicated two important biographies: Napoleon, Salerno Editrice (2002 and new edition 2015, Fondation Napoléon Prize) and Metternich, Salerno Editrice (2014, Filippo Burzio Prize of the Turin Academy of Sciences and Rhegium Julii Prize). He is Commandeur de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic and invited professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and the Catholic University of Santiago, Chile. He is on the scientific committee of Napoleon’s Correspondance at the publisher Fayard. For Laterza, he is the author of, among others. 500 days. Napoleon from Elba to St. Helena. (2016); World history. From the year 1000 to the present day (with F. Canale Cama and A. Feniello, 2019); The Modern Age. A global history (2020) e Napoleon’s Last Room. Memoirs of St. Helena , Salerno, 2021 and May 11, 1860, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2023.
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
1 hour February 15, 2024 11 a.m. Donizetti Theater 10€ based on theater availability

Loris Zanatta teaches History of Latin America at the University of Bologna.
Like the Catholic kings he fuses politics and religion, coming to conceive of a ‘political’ religion. He creates not a political community but a community of faith, inclusive toward the faithful, ruthless with heretics. And his enemies are the same as those of Catholic Spain: Protestant civilization and the Enlightenment, now renamed ‘capitalism’ and ‘liberalism.’
Loris Zanatta teaches History and Institutions of Latin America at the University of Bologna. He is a columnist for the Buenos Aires newspapers “La Nación” and “Clarín” and a member of the Academy of the History of the Argentine Republic. He has numerous historical publications to his credit, including: Eva Perón. A political biography. , Rubbettino (2009); History of Contemporary Latin America, Laterza (2010); Populism, Carocci (2013); The Catholic Nation. Church and dictatorship in Bergoglio’s Argentina. , Laterza (2014, also published in Argentina), Fidel Castro. The last “Catholic king” , Salerno (2019) and Jesuit populism. Perón, Fidel, Bergoglio , Laterza (2020).
DURATION DATE PLACE COST PARTICIPANTS
1 hour March 1, 2024 11 a.m. Donizetti Theater 10€ based on theater availability

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