Thank you for visiting our archive. Each performance submitted to our website will be explained in detail in its own blog post. You can choose to look through these posts in a variety of ways.
Venice, 1574: two charlatans and mountebanks are asked to stage Romeo and Juliet in honour of Henry III Valois who is visiting the city. In a couple of hours, they have to find the right Juliet; a chaste and beautiful maid is needed. They pick out a provocative courtesan, Veronica. The show we attend is an open rehearsal, rich in improvisation acts in the style of "commedia dell'arte."
Read MoreFounded in 1921 by Don Gaetano Napoli, Marionettistica Fratelli Napoli is a family run company specialised in the traditional Sicilian puppet theatre called Opera dei Pupi. The creative cast is almost exclusively made up by family members and they also cover all the roles of performances.
The Fratelli Napoli’s adaptation of Richard III is the distinctive result of the traditional Opera dei Pupi, the Sicilian Puppet Theatre. Therefore, all characters act according to that tradition. For instance, Richard III’s interpretation is heavily influenced by that of Gano di Magonza, the stock character which is the villain par excellence in the epic poem The Song of Roland, the favourite and most represented adaptation of the Opera dei Pupi.
Read MoreThis show was designed as a site-specific staging of Macbeth, in the wardrobe of Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza. In this space the directors wanted to recreate the crudeness of the contemporary world in juxtaposition with the rich beauty of the Basilica itself. Their version of Macbeth, as they remark, stresses "the radicalism of evil of the human soul, which leads to deceit and folly, in a constant contrast between the supernatural and the deviant interpretation of reality."
Read MoreW.S. Tempest is the third episode of a Shakespearean 'trilogy of water' that Teatro del Lemming has worked on in the last few years. During the performance, the whole Shakespearean corpus is evoked, as if its characters were small fragments of ourselves. W.S. Tempest is the telling of a shipwreck which initially occurs in the mind of Prospero/Shakespeare who, from the sea depths, evokes its characters as if in rapture.
Read MoreVerdi described Macbeth as 'one of mankind's greatest creations'. His opera based on the play was part of the Welsh National Opera's autumn Shakespeare400 Season. WNO Artistic Director David Pountney said ‘It's a marvellous opportunity for us to bring together enormously varied works which Shakespeare’s works have inspired.’
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In a prison that looks very much like Hell, suspended in space and time, Othello is bound to endlessly atone for the murder of Desdemona. Delirious and obsessed, he becomes one with his nemesis, Iago. Othello's Guilt paints a dystopian picture of jealousy, personal anguish and self-destruction, using exclusively Shakespeare's words.
Roberto Cavosi's new adaptation highlights the relationship between good and evil - themes which inhabit us all. Cavosi’s work absorbs and transforms the psychological intensity at the heart of modern and contemporary theatre, from Pirandello to Beckett. With Othello’s Guilt, the company wishes to reach a multicultural audience who are willing to be challenged by an original and innovatory approach to Shakespeare.
After its premiere (in Italian) at the Teatro Antico in Segesta (Sicily) in August, this 55 minute monologue marks the return to The Rose of actor Marco Gambino, who has recently received international acclaim after appearing in popular Italian television series Squadra Antimafia and Young Montalbano.
Read MoreThe two directors, who also adapted the text, believe that their production presents the figure of a new man. Macbeth is an antihero who brings within him fairness and unfairness, a sort of Copernicus who in between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth century challenges the status quo. He oscillates between the symbolic inheritance and the new relativism which leads to modernity.
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Romeo and Juliet, the Romantic tragedy par excellence, becomes a middle-class tragedy about generational clashes in Andrea Baracco’s vision. The tearing conflicts which run through the whole story show us an adult world shut in its own unmoving universe—its houses are like shop windows. The adults are just interested in keeping their own privileges and remain impassive to the uneasiness and the violent passions which overcome their sons and daughters. Baracco's reading of this classic tries to tell us about our contemporary world, hanging in the balance between fidelity to the original and his own interpretation of it characterized by a stylized theatrical language.
Read MoreThis production pays special attention to the play's characterization by portraying, for example, Romeo and Juliet's love, Mercutio's sensitive, delicate foolishness, Benvolio's young but wise loyalty, and Tebaldo's strength and boldness.
Read MoreHamm-let
Presented in Italian
Kamaraterem/Chamber Hall, Gyula, Hungary, as part of the Gyula Shakespeare Festival
July 14, 2016
Piccola Compagnia della Magnolia
Director: Giorgia Cerruti
Cast:
Gertrude: Giorgia Cerruti
Ophelia: Federica Carra
Hamm-Let: Davide Giglio
The playtext used for the show is based on the 1597 First Quarto (Q1) of Romeo and Juliet, translated and staged integrally for the first time in Italy. Teatrino del Giullare stages Romeo and Juliet as a comic tragedy made of contrasts and illusions, a tale built on reflections, anxieties and desires created with the help of masks which the the two performers characteristically employ in every creation they stage.
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Director Luca De Fusco worked on the text in order to highlight the weird elements present within it. In his opinion, the fundamental moments in the play are all pervaded by an oneiric, dreamlike atmosphere which goes as far as the unreal. At the centre of the scene he puts the Macbeths' bedroom, because he believes that more than a play about war and dead it is a play about a philosophical, theological and psychiatric struggle.
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What happens when morals collapse? Macbeth cannot stop murdering once he’s started. There is no place for empathy in his hunt for what he most desires: complete power. Verdi’s music and David Radok’s detailed directions drive the action towards the end. This production opened at Gothenburg Opera in 2008.
Read MoreGiulio Cesare – Pezzi staccati (Julius Caesar – Spared Parts) is a show inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedy. Romeo Castellucci brings back to the theatre a shortened version of his ground-breaking 1997 production of Julius Caesar in a new version made up of ‘fragments’ that evoke the original.
Read More“Italian opera’s greatest tragedy, Otello is a miraculous union of music and drama, a masterpiece as profound philosophically as it is thrilling theatrically. Shakespeare’s tale of an outsider, a great hero who can’t control his jealousy, was carefully molded by the librettist Arrigo Boito into a taut and powerful opera text. Otello almost wasn’t written: following the success of Aida and his setting of the Requiem mass in the early 1870s, Verdi considered himself retired, and it took Boito and publisher Giulio Ricordi several years to persuade him to take on a major new work.”
--description from the Metropolitan Opera website
Giuseppe Verdi's last opera is an ebullient comic masterpiece about a joyful knight. The work is based on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor and is a humorous celebration of love and life. Set, directed by Ann-Margret Pettersson, premiered at the Opera in 2009 with a colorful stage design of the high esteem the artist Lennart Jirlow.
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“A multilingual reading of Hamlet– the most frequently performed and translated play in the world — by the students, faculty, alumni, and supporters of the University of Ottawa.”
Read MoreA production of Bellini's version of the Romeo and Juliet story, by Pop-up Opera, an innovative touring opera company which aims to broaden the appeal of opera by taking it into usual spaces and challenging the way opera is performed.
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Othello's story told by Shakespeare is a tragedy, and told by Verdi is a melodrama. What if the same story is told by an eclectic actress such as Marina Massironi? It becomes a hilarious set of circumstances about passions and intrigues moving from the 16th to 19th Centuries, with unexpected and pungent references to the original as well.
The production premiered in 2014, presented in 2016 in a revival to celebrate the Shakespeare anniversary. Academy award winner Nicola Piovani composed the musical score which is played live during the show to accompany the Clown’s songs and to provide musical accompaniment to scene changes and to underline key moments.
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This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
