Successfully inaugurated the Prose Season with The Irresistible Boys, the Donizetti Theatre Foundation now launches the Altri Percorsi series, as always a showcase of new theatrical realities in the name of experimenting with various languages.
It begins on Thursday, December 19 at the Teatro Sociale (8:30 PM) with Re Lear is Dead in Moscow, winner of the “Theatrical Mass 2023” award, featuring the dramaturgy and direction of the Argentine César Brie, a prominent figure in research theatre, well known and appreciated by the Bergamo audience. On this occasion, César Brie himself will take the stage at the Sociale along with a group of young actors: Leonardo Ceccanti, co-author of the dramaturgy, Davide De Togni, Anna Vittoria Ferri, Michelangelo Nervosi, a former student of the Young Project of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation, Tommaso Pioli, Annalesi Secco, Laura Taddeo and Alessandro Treccani. Bodywork by Vera Dalla Pasqua. Costumes by Matteo Corsi. Lighting by César Brie and the ensemble. Music by Pablo Brie and the Yiddish tradition. Historical consultancy by Antonio Attisani. Co-production Isola del Teatro, Campo Teatrale and Teatro Dell’Elfo. Duration: 1 hour and 40 minutes without intermission.
At the end of the show, there will be a meeting with César Brie and the company coordinated by Maria Grazia Panigada, Artistic Director of the Prose and Altri Percorsi Season.
Re Lear is Dead in Moscow is also at the center of a series of thematic meetings, the last of which is scheduled for Wednesday, December 18 at the “M. Tremaglia” Music Hall of the Donizetti Theatre at 6:00 PM: Maria Grazia Recanati from the Polytechnic of the Arts of Bergamo – Accademia Carrara of Fine Arts will scrutinize the delicate relationships between figurative art and power, in terms of compromise, dissent, and collaboration.
«Re Lear è morto a Mosca tells the story of the Jewish theater Goset, founded in Moscow in 1919 by director Aleksandr Granovsky and painter-scenographer Marc Chagall: the actor-directors who led it, Solomon Mikhoels and Veniamin Zuskin, were assassinated on Stalin’s orders, thus decreeing the end of the Goset theater», says Maria Grazia Panigada, «It is a precious show from a theatrical point of view and of great civil reflection, and I am very pleased to emphasize that among the actors is Michelangelo Nervosi, one of the students of the past edition of the Young Project, whose show Vorrei che fosse amore was directed by César Brie. This is one of the many testimonies of the importance of the educational work carried out for Progetto Young together with Fabio Comana».
The story of King Lear Died in Moscow takes place in a specific year, 1948. On January 13, in Minsk, a van hits and kills Solomon Michoels: all that remains of him is a wristwatch stopped at 10 PM, two daughters, and a wife. On the night between December 23 and 24, in Moscow, Venjamin Zuskin is kidnapped in his sleep, interrogated, tortured, and four years later executed by firing squad. The great Jewish Theater of Moscow, the Goset, loses Lear and his Fool. The first and only King Lear in Yiddish will never be performed again. Solomon Michoels and Venjamin Zuskin: two Jewish actors, two friends, were condemned for having flown too high, guilty of having imagined an art theater made of songs, dances, poems, and colors in Yiddish in Stalin’s Soviet Union.
King Lear Died in Moscow is a show of memories to be rediscovered, preserved beyond the stage. A journey to tell a true story now forgotten, through the paintings of Chagall and the characters of King Lear.
