Four new productions available from 12th to 16th February on the Backstage free platform that recall Goldoni’s and Shakespeare’s theatre, tell Carlo Gozzi’s fairy tales and take up the
ancient art of the Magic Lantern.
12th Feb – Storie di Carta, episode II
12th Feb – Baseggio Francesco, aka Cesco
13th Feb – The Taming of the Shrew
16th Feb – L’augellino belverde
Thursday, 4th February – No self-respecting Carnival is complete without shows and masks. And so, even if the halls are closed, the Teatro Stabile del Veneto proposes, as per
tradition, a programme of virtual events dedicated to the funniest festival of the year and available free of charge from 12th to 16th February on the digital platform Backstage.
Four titles that recall the theatre of Goldoni and Shakespeare, tell the tales of Carlo Gozzi and resume the ancient art of the Magic Lantern.
It begins on February 12 (4:00pm) with the airing of the second episode of the review for children Storie di Carta, signed by Barabao Theatre, reality of the territory has
always been attentive to the proposals for the younger audience, and produced by the Stabile del Veneto in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce of Padua.
From an idea born in the months of lockdown, the “Storie di Carta” project has been developed with the contribution of an extended team involving actors, directors, singers, designers, graphic
designers, camera and sound operators with the aim of combining the ancient art of shadow projection with new video technologies and giving life, in the wake of the ancient art of the Magic
Lantern, to exciting and entertaining stories aimed at children and their families.
As always, the protagonists of the episode are the two clumsy pirates, Billy and Kid, alter egos of creators Ivan Di Noia and Romina Ranzato, perpetually in search of a treasure for
which they undertake extraordinary feats.
Also on Friday 12th February at 7:00 pm, Baseggio Francesco, aka Cesco, is staged, a show produced by the Teatro Stabile del Veneto to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the
death of the great Venetian actor Cesco Baseggio, who dedicated much of his career to Carlo Goldoni, but also the hundredth anniversary of his first appearance on stage in a professional
training course (12th February 1921).
The project conceived by Bepi Morassi and Anna Bogo, as well as a wide range of documentary material such as photos, playbills, press clippings and videos, including some of his
most moving plays, is realised with the collaboration of the Museo di Casa Goldoni and sees the participation of scholars and university professors Paolo Puppa, Piermario Vescovo and
Giuseppe Barbanti.
From his debut as a violinist at the Teatro Rossini in Venice in 1913 to the height of his fame with RAI scripts of the great texts of Veneto theatre in the 1960s, to his twilight accompanied by
the notes of an opera based on the Goldoni text that most marked the actor’s life, I rusteghi, the production of Baseggio Francesco, aka Cesco, is presented as a retrospective
aimed at revealing aspects of the great actor’s career that are perhaps less well-known, but certainly significant.
On 13th February (7:00 pm), on the eve of Carnival, but also Valentine’s Day, the Teatro Stabile del Veneto presents a classic Shakespearean comedy The Taming of the Shrew adapted
by Andrea Pennacchi and directed by Silvia Paoli.
A new production staged in the year of Covid by the Bresci Theatre and the Teatro Stabile del Veneto, which sets the story of the two young lovers Petruccio and Caterina in the Italy of
the 1990s, the years of the rise of Berlusconi, the economic crisis (its beginning), the fall of the Berlin Wall just happened, top models, grunge, men who know Denim and Non è la rai on
television.
This is a story about love, sincerity and fragility, about two problematic young men who meet and start a story in their own way, looking for a space in a society in which they do not recognise
themselves, but where they find the same problems of patriarchy, machismo and domestic violence.
The digital programme dedicated to Carnival closes on Shrove Tuesday, 16th February (7:00 pm), with L’augellino belverde, a theatrical fairy tale by Carlo Gozzi, starring the
“bastard” twins Renzo and Barbarina, the real children of King Tartaglia and Queen Ninetta, who grew up reading the librettos of modern philosophers. They leave the home of their adoptive
parents, Truffaldino and Smeraldina, and, through a journey of maturation and disillusionment, only partly fairy-tale, find themselves.
The show, conceived and staged by Piermario Vescovo and Antonella Zaggia, is produced by Teatro dell’orso in peata and Teatro Stabile Veneto in collaboration with
Teatro a l’Avogaria as part of the Veneto Region’s programme to promote major events “Carlo Gozzi 1720/2020” on the occasion of the third centenary of the birth of the famous Venetian
playwright and writer (1720-1806).
The play was presented in a video, specially produced by the Master’s degree in fine arts and filmaking at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, on the occasion of the international conference
that the Universities of Venice and Verona, in collaboration with the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s Institute for Theatre and Melodrama, the Teatro Stabile Veneto and other organisations
(including the Universities of Paris-Sorbonne, Salzburg, Santiago de Compostela, etc.), organised last December to celebrate the third centenary of Carlo Gozzi’s birth.
