At the Bellini Theater a Salento reinterpretation of the ballet of "Sleeping Beauty" to music by Tchaikovsky is staged. Where Princess Aurora is bitten by a tarantula ...
Il Bellini Theater of Naples it will make us accomplish, until December 28, a dip in the world of the most famous fairy tale in the world, Sleeping Beauty, written by Charles Perrault in the seventeenth century but consecrated to success by the animated version of Disney in the 1959. The beautiful original music of Petr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, on whose notes dance 16 very light and agile dancers, initially drag the spectators back in time, creating the right "fairytale" atmosphere. The most suitable to tell the story of Princess Aurora who, due to a witch's curse, on her 16th birthday, is stung by a spindle and falls into an eternal sleep. Only true love expressed by the kiss of a prince charming can wake her up, and bring everything back to initial harmony.
This is the fairy tale we all know. But in the contemporary version of the Southern Ballet created by the choreographer from Salento Fredy Franzutti, poor Aurora is a fresh Mediterranean girl who is born in a small town in Southern Italy in the 40s (in particular in the most "eastern" place in Italy), where women dress in black in times of war and are colored in colorful 50s clothes when the war ends and the "American spirit" has spread to young people. When little Aurora is baptized, the witch Carabosse, an old fortune teller specializing in hexes and exorcisms, not having been invited to the celebration, decides to curse the fate of the little girl who, on her 16th birthday, will be stung by a spindle of a weaver. To reassure the desperate parents is a gypsy who, following the rite of the pagan tradition of those southern lands, performs a spell to protect Aurora.
Sixteen years later, when the war is now over and all evil seems to be forgotten, Aurora's birthday is celebrated, with songs and dances inspired by that brilliant and prosperous era. But the old sorceress again invites herself to the celebration and brings with her a fatal gift: a Salento tarantula that stings the young Aurora making her fall into eternal sleep. The "weaver" of the curse was nothing more than a spider that weaves cobwebs ...
The story continues in the most "classic" of ways. But the Prince Charming, in the version of the Southern Ballet, turns into a handsome anthropologist intrigued by the popular traditions of the place and who, during his explorations, meets Sleeping Beauty in the woods. A kiss and her true love of her will be enough to reach the happy ending. Spectators are curious to know what happened to the Carabosse witch ...
Franzutti's revisiting operation is bold and stimulating, carried out with the intention of "stealing" the essence of the story from Perrault's traditional fable and transporting it to his homeland (Salento) and associating it with the legends that belong to it. . Like the story of the Italian Giambattista Basile who in the collection Pentamerone tells of a princess asleep for a spell in the south of Italy. Perrault himself seems to have been inspired by it.
Sleeping Beauty is the fable I preferred during my childhood, and I still consider it "the fairy tale". In making one of my versions, I wanted to approach the light spirit of history, and together I made the story itself draw closer to me and my world - in the most direct and concrete way: chronologically and geographically. I express here the particular pleasure of knowing that the production, traveling, represents the mythical tone that, among the others, in one of his writings also Marguerite Yourcenar saw in my land, the Orient of Italy. I tell the story of Aurora, the time of my grandparents, the time of my mother, my time.
in short Sleeping Beauty it is made in Italy, specifically it has its origins in the south of Italy, of which it transmits the colors, the flavor, the expressions of its inhabitants, at times even its dances and contemporary melodies that mix with the most classic and refined dance steps. Always and strictly on the unmistakable notes of Tchaikovsky.
To know the dates, times and prices of the show, consult our article on Sleeping Beauty.
