Freely adapted from “The Satin Slipper” from Paul Claudel.

Directing of Otello Cenci. Script from Gianpiero Pizzol, Otello Cenci and Agnese Bezzera, costumes and scenery by Luigi Spezzacatene, music by Mirna Kassis.
With Maurizio Donadoni, Benedetta Dimaggio, Massimo Nivolini, Paolo Sumaria, Franco Ferrante, Sara Bevilacqua, Raffaele Braia, Nichele D’Errico and Daniela Piccari.
In colaboration with Malatestiana Music Festival and Puglia Region.
Under the patronage of Société Paul Claudel

 

On the occasion of the great French poet’s 150th birthday, an important theatrical event comes to life inspired by one of Paul Claudel’s greatest works, which he considered to be his spiritual testament and his dramaturgical masterpiece. “Announcement to Mary” is famous all over the world, his much less known work is The Satin Slipper, which is rarely represented for the stage commitment that requires 73 characters for almost 11 hours of spectacular events that take us to Europe, Africa, Asia, America, in a fairytale and bloody baroque, Christian and barbaric, comic and tragic.
It’s not just a love story…

When two humans being to love each other the game of destiny is always involved.
The thread that binds the two protagonists Donna Prodezza and Don Rodrigo is also the plot that drags the events of history: the conquest of the Americas, the war against the Ottoman empire, the development of the Far East, the conflicts between nations and the desire for a difficult peace among people.
It is therefore a great epic in which the poet questions the connection between the individual happiness and of the whole earth, but also the value of beauty, communication between cultures, the desire and the force that moves the heart of man even when it leans towards evil.
The title comes from the emblematic gesture of the protagonist who was linked to Don Pelagio by marriage, is passionately attracted to Rodrigo and decides to entrust her slipper to the hands of the Virgin saying – When I try to rush towards the evil that is with a lame foot. And when I want to exceed the limit that you have established that it is with a broken wing.

Great lover of the Claudian opera has always been the theologian and friend of the poet Hans Urs Von Balthasar, who considers it to be one of the greatest monuments of Western culture.
The seventeenth century is authored by Claudel, in this work is about the is the era when the earth grows under the boots of Christopher Columbus who with a straight line like an arrow no longer seeks the horizon above himself, but in front of him. Suddenly a terrible and pleasant discovery takes place: the line bends and comes back on itself. The globe is a prison, forever. Humanity refers to itself not only from the geographic and astronomical point of view, it desires itself to point upwards, towards the angels, it bends and comes back on itself. If there is a paradise, then it is here, on the earth to be found, on this earth that perhaps will be devoured by the fire of its own desire and guilt. From the fire of God’s love and anger, but it will be a reborn and refigured earth!

So it’s a work in which the word becomes flesh, the look seeks another look and the feet look for a way to go. Claudel works quite passionately with all his poetic and theatrical skills, his career as an ambassador which brought him into contact with different cultures and his personal experience that led him painfully to his passion and represents the whole humanity in the light steps of a small satin slipper.