Enrico IV of Pirandello on stage at the Bellini Theater in Naples

Franco Branciaroli directs and interprets Pirandello's "Enrico IV" at the Bellini Theater in Naples, between madness, reality and fiction

Will be staged at Bellini Theater of Naples, from the 10 15 2015 November, one of the most famous works of the Sicilian playwright Luigi Pirandello: Henry IV. Direction and interpretation of Franco Branciaroli.

Considered the masterpiece of his dramaturgy, afterwards Six characters in search of an author,Henry IV by Pirandello was written in 1921 and performed for the first time on February 24, 1922 at the Teatro Manzoni in Milan.

Henry IV is a very topical text that investigates the most dear issues a Pirandello: the madness and the labile border existing between reality e fiction, between the essence of the soul of each of us and the character in which we are caged by society. Franco Branciaroli he confronts for the first time with a text by the playwright from Agrigento, continuing his investigation of the great characters of the theater, after Don Quixote and Servant of the scene, proposing a modern and refined staging that has received enormous success with critics and audiences.

The story opens on a particular episode. A man disguised as Henry IV, falls from his horse during a masked ball. The shock makes him lose his mind and, upon awakening him, he is convinced that he really is the historical sovereign. For the next twenty years, his folly is indulged by family and servants who stage the "court" around him, making him live as if he were Henry IV. Is he really crazy or is he so lucid that he realized that playing the role of the king is the only way to survive in a present that doesn't suit him?