I ragazzi irresistibili
Teatro DonizettiThe two main characters in the play by Neil Simon, rightly judged to be one of the greatest American writers of the last fifty years, are two elderly variety actors who have worked as a couple all their lives, creating a duo that became famous as "The Irresistible Boys," and who, after separating due to irreconcilable misunderstandings, are called upon to reunite, eleven years later, on the occasion of a television program that wants them together, for one night only, to celebrate the history of the glorious American variety show. Onstage we see the two old actors with their different personalities trying to mend that rift that separated them for so many years in an attempt to revive a comic number that made them famous. Old misunderstandings reappear more entrenched and this difficult alchemy is the pretext for a play of brilliant comedy and deep melancholy. Certain exchanges of jokes and hilarious situations are a source not only of comedy but also of a look of profound tenderness for that world of the theater which, when it sees its protagonists set off on the avenue of decline, shows all its human fragility. Umberto Orsini and Franco Branciaroli come together again to revive this text, which in recent years has become a classic, in an attempt to capture everything that makes it closer to the theater of a Beckett(Finale di Partita) or even a Chekhov(Il Canto del Cigno) rather than a work of pure entertainment. In this homage to the world of actors, to their small and delightful foibles and tragic miseries, they are joined by the direction of Massimo Popolizio, who finds in the two protagonists those companions on the road with whom he has shared so many of the most intense and significant experiences of theater in recent years. Inspired by the lives of a famous pair of vaudeville performers, Joe Smith and Charles Dale, Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys debuted on Broadway in 1972 under the direction of Alan Arkin. Numerous and highly successful theatrical productions were staged worldwide in the following decades, and, with the author's screenplay, an award-winning 1975 film version directed by Herbert Ross, starring Walter Matthau and George Burns. The 1995 adaptation for the U.S. small screen was entrusted to two A-list stars, Woody Allen and Peter Falk. Playbill by Neil Simon translation Masolino D'Amico directed Massimo Popolizio with Umberto Orsini, Franco Branciaroli, Flavio Francucci, Chiara Stoppa, Eros Pascale, Emanuela Saccardi scenes Maurizio Balò costumes Gianluca Sbicca lights Carlo Pediani sound Alessandro Saviozzi production Teatro de Gli Incamminati, Compagnia Orsini, Teatro Biondo Palermo in collaboration with CTB Centro Teatrale Bresciano andwith AMAT Associazione Marchigiana Attività Teatrali and Comune di Fabriano Duration 2 hours including intermission
Sinfonia N. 9 in Re Minore OP. 125
Teatro SocialeThe closing concert of the first Musical Season promoted by the Polli Stoppani Foundation - de Sabata Ceccato Library is entrusted to the prestigious piano duo Michele Campanella and Monica Leone, who will perform Beethoven's masterpiece Ninth Symphony in Franz Liszt's ingenious transcription. Over the course of 2024, a series of nine concerts, of which the December 12 concert marks the last appointment, have retraced the cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies in Franz Liszt's piano transcriptions. The program included a calendar of appointments, every other month, during which the participants were treated to a live concert each time and the screening of a historical film of the symphonies performed during the Bergamo Brescia Music Festival at the Donizetti Theater in 1989 by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Aldo Ceccato. "With the guidance and help of Maestro Aldo Ceccato and Maestro Michele Campanella," says Giovanni Gavazzeni, Artistic Director of the festival, " a valiant handful of Italian pianists led us one by one through Liszt's 'transcriptions,' rightly considered the greatest of their kind in the history of music." The piano duo formed by Monica Leone and Michele Campanella has no official date of birth, but it is the natural development of the habit of playing together between teacher and student first, between partners in music and in life later. It is the result of a mentality and approach to piano shared from the beginning, having both grown up, at different times, in the school of Vincenzo Vitale. The ever-expanding repertoire includes music for four hands and two pianos and ranges from Bach to Bartok. Among the most frequently performed pieces are, in addition to an extensive anthology of four-hand music by Schubert, Ferruccio Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica, Beethoven/Liszt's Ninth Symphony, Stravinsky's Concerto for Two Pianos, Liszt's Dante Symphony, and Poulenc's Sonata. The appearances to be remembered are numerous and significant. From the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome to the Sydney Opera House, from the Coliseum in Buenos Aires to Beijing, Shanghai and Canton, from the Settimana Musicale Senese to the Sagra Umbra in Perugia, from the Teatro San Carlo in Naples to the Orchestra della Toscana in Florence, to the Orchestra da Camera di Padova e del Veneto, to the Orchestra dei Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, to the Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti in Rome, to the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, to the Rossini Opera Festival, from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino to the Cantiere internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano, to Auckland in New Zealand, and to Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia. In collaboration with Vittorio Polli and Anna Maria Stoppani Foundation Playbill in the transcription for two pianos by Franz Liszt with Monica Leone piano Michele Campanella piano In collaboration with Fondazione Vittorio Polli and Anna Maria Stoppani Duration 1 hour and 15 minutes without intermission