16th February, Italian Institut at 18,30
Written and directed by awards winning Italian playwright Roberto Cavosi
Performed by Marco Gambino
On the piano Simone Spagnolo
Reinterpreting the myth of “Don Giovanni” in an anti-historical key, Roberto Cavosi develops his own personal narrative, which, starting from a late nineteenth century New Orleans, between the barges full of slaves and the sophisticated French Quarter, moves to the colonial Shanghai of the 30s, with its Anglo-Chinese banks, mines and opium dens, and ends in our times, in the death row of a Californian prison, where the ghosts of the prisoners bring to mind Goya’s Caprichos. It’s, therefore, within this epic fresco background that the figure of Don Giovanni – so frequently re-visited throughout history – has an unexpected twist. These are the original premises on which Roberto Cavosi and composer Alessandro Sgobbio have worked to define the musical score for this “Don Giovanni”: a combination of quotations, composed and improvised fragments that develop in close symbiosis with the word and the voice.
Roberto Cavosi’s plays have been produced by the most prestigious theatres in Italy including a number of Teatri Stabili (state-funded theatres) in Bolzano, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Rome, Veneto, Palermo and the Franco Parenti Theatre in Milan. Internationally, his work has been staged in France and Belgium. He is the recipient of various awards such as Premio Idi and Premio Riccione. Mr Cavosi is a lecturer at IUAV University in Venice.
Marco Gambino was born in Sicily and has been living in London for more than twenty years. He has worked on stage with various directors amongst whom: Antonio Raffaele Addamo, Paolo Puppa, Philippe de Groussuvre, Yvonne McDevitt and Manuela Ruggiero. Amongst his recent theatrical project inspired by Marco’s interest in the civil theatre : Words of Honour, the result of a collaboration with award winning journalist Attilio Bolzoni.
Simone Spagnolo is regarded as one of the most promising composers of his generation. With his work “Evil Magician”, “Orchestral Variations” and “Soaku’s Revenge” he won three times the Asia America Symphony Orchestra Composition Prize (in 2006, 2008 and 2009)
