Project around the play King Lear died in Moscow

Dictatorships often use different artistic languages (Cinema, Visual Art and Music) in their subjugation of populations, instrumentalizing them for their own propaganda. The play King Lear is Dead in Moscow shows how dictatorial regimes, in this case Stalin’s, fear cultural freedom, which is why the protagonists of Moscow’s Jewish theater were killed, ending an experience recognized throughout Europe. In the meetings, curated by experts in the individual fields, a reflection on artistic languages during dictatorships will be proposed with the aim of offering historical knowledge, but also of giving tools for decoding and reading about languages and the messages they can convey.

Project realized in collaboration with ISREC – Istituto Bergamasco per la Storia della Resistenza e Dell’Età Contemporanea.

Wednesday, December 4, 2024, 6 p.m.
Sala della Musica “M. Tremaglia” – Donizetti Theater

Art in the service of the regime. The regime in the service of art
Continuity and discontinuity of cinema between fascist propaganda and early postwarperiod
by Isrec – speakers Luciana Bramati (Isrec) and Giorgio Giovanetti (Ferruccio Parri National Institute)

During the meeting, the extent to which cinema, from being the regime’s greatest consensus-building tool, becomes a vehicle for the construction of the memory of the struggle for freedom will be analyzed. The cases of some directors will help develop the theme.

Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, 6 p.m.
Music Room “M. Tremaglia” – Donizetti Theater

On the Notes of a Song
The cases of the Song of the Deportees, Frida Misul’s Sad Songs and Whistles the Wind
by Isrec – speakers Elisabetta Ruffini and Angelo Bendotti (Isrec)

Inside the violence of a lager, facing the fascist violence that hunts the partisans in the mountains, singing together becomes a moment to become aware of the experience one is living by finding the horizon to think about tomorrow. The speakers will present some cases of songs that became an expression of the collective and exceptional dimension of the camp and the partisan struggle.

Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024, 6 p.m.
Sala della Musica “M. Tremaglia” – Donizetti Theater

Art and Regime
The Power of Aesthetics
curated by Maria Grazia Recanati (Politecnico delle Arti di Bergamo – Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti)

Art has always had relations with power. In the sense of compromise, dissent, collaboration. The 20th century has recorded two historically significant episodes in particular: the two totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union. What were the attitudes of artists toward these regimes as they occurred? How did the two regimes react to the new artistic research that the historical avant-gardes were presenting? Through some emblematic cases, we will address the oh-so-sensitive topic of the relationship between art and the regime, which is intended to condition human consciousness in an overall and total way.

All meetings are free admission by reservation on EventBrite (reservations open beginning November 18, 2024)