Mastro don Gesualdo di Verga on stage at the Bellini Theater

The famous novel by Giovanni Verga becomes a contemporary and original theatrical representation

It will be on stage at Bellini Theater of Naples, 20 from January to 25 2015, the theatrical adaptation of one of the best known novels by the writer Giovanni Verga, the greatest exponent of Italian Verismo.

Written in the 1889, Mastro don Gesualdo, tells the story of Gesualdo Motta in the small town of Vizzini, in Sicily, going through the stages of his life, from poor childhood to adventurous adolescence, from maturity, satisfied by economic success, but failed in terms of affection and human relationships , until death and loneliness.

The protagonist, Gesualdo Motta, is a former bricklayer who managed to make a social climb thanks to his industriousness. Enriched, he then marries Bianca Trao, a fallen noble who does not, however, bring satisfaction and prestige to Gesualdo. And he begins to bring his drama into the titles that precede his name: he is a "don" for the plebs, who identify him as a "gentleman" now belonging to another world, but he remains a "master" for the aristocrats, who they do not recognize him and treat him as a stranger. Abandoned by his affections (his wife and daughter Isabella, born from his wife's previous relationship), he was then forced to leave the country in revolt due to the riots of '48. He will fall ill with cancer, and will go to live in Palermo in his daughter's palace where he witnesses the destruction of his wealth and dies alone and abandoned by everyone.

Enrico Guarneri Mastro don Gesualdo

To interpret Mastro don Gesualdo, in the theatrical version directed by Guglielmo Ferro, Sara Enrico Guarneri, a multifaceted actor who has been able to bring on stage many of the characters who have made the history of Sicilian and European theater dramaturgy.

The director Guglielmo Ferro he is the son of Turi Ferro, interpreter of Mastro don Gesualdo in 1967, and, for years, he has dedicated himself to contemporary dramaturgy by adopting a European-style directing technique. The one carried out on the Mastro don Gesualdo is a cultural operation that aims, in absolute respect of the historical-literary value of Verga's text, at a more current transposition, recontextualizing the 'concept of stuff', which permeates the novel, and the incessant and frenetic activity of speculation in a world of extreme materialism, where there is no room for feelings, in a world without space and time, in which the characters, like puppets, cannot to do is go to meet your own destiny, which nothing and nobody can change. There is no positive vision of life, which emerges as a dead end, inexorable. The scene is strongly contemporary, sparse, minimalist, leaving a lot of space for video projections that illuminate the suffocating darkness, evocative of Gesualdo Motta's inner greyness.