The award-winning Anna Della Rosa and Valter Malosti star in Antony and Cleopatra, a love tragedy and political drama, but also a memorable exploration of art and the artistic experience, written by the Bard between 1607 and 1608, blending tragedy and comedy.
Amidst the clangour of arms and the intrigues of politics, the vibrant love of Antony and Cleopatra bursts forth, heroes who go to any lengths to assert their boundless freedom. Valter Malosti and Anna Della Rosa, supported by a brilliant cast of ten performers, bring to life William Shakespeare’s masterpiece, whose verses rank among the most sublime and evocative in the entire Shakespearean canon, playing with the high and the low, history, eros and power. Antony and Cleopatra are the overflowing protagonists of a play built on oppositions: male and female, duty and desire, the bedchamber and the battlefield, youth and old age, ancient Egyptian truth and Roman realpolitik. Politically incorrect and dangerously vital, to the mysterious and furious rhythm of an Egyptian bacchanal, they transcend reason and the games of politics. Inimitable and unrivalled, not even death can contain them.
“Of Antony and Cleopatra,” says Malosti, here in his dual role as director and performer, “my generation has etched into its memory above all the image, bordering on kitsch, of the Hollywood couple Richard Burton and Liz Taylor. But in this disenchanted and mysterious work, which blends the tragic, the comic, the sacred and the grotesque; in this marvellous philosophical and mystical (and alchemical) poem that sanctifies eros, for more than one scholar, demonstrating its profound complexity, the shadow of our great philosopher Giordano Bruno: a theatre of the mind that demands a new heaven and a new earth”.
di
William Shakespeare
uno spettacolo di
Valter Malosti
traduzione e adattamento
Nadia Fusini
Valter Malosti
con
Anna Della Rosa
Valter Malosti
e con
Dario Battaglia
Massimo Verdastro
Jacopo Squizzato
Paolo Giangrasso
Noemi Grasso
Ivan Graziano
Dario Guidi
Flavio Pieralice
Gabriele Rametta
Carla Vukmirovic
chitarra elettrica live
Andrea Cauduro
arpa celtica live
Dario Guidi
scene
Margherita Palli
costumi
Carlo Poggioli
disegno luci
Cesare Accetta
progetto sonoro
GUP Alcaro
cura del movimento
Marco Angelilli
maestro collaboratore
Andrea Cauduro
assistenti alla regia
Virginia Landi
Jacopo Squizzato
assistenti alle scene
Marco Cristini
Matilde Casadei
assistenti ai costumi
Simona Falanga
Riccardo Filograna
produzione
Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale,
Fondazione Teatro di Napoli – Teatro Bellini,
Teatro Stabile di Bolzano,
Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale,
LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura
Cleopatra
Anna Della Rosa
Antonio
Valter Malosti
Enobarbo
Danilo Nigrelli
Cesare Ottaviano
Dario Battaglia
Indovino
Massimo Verdastro
Messaggero di Cleopatra
Paolo Giangrasso
Agrippa
Ivan Graziano
Incanto
Noemi Grasso
Eros
Dario Guidi
A director, actor and visual artist, he has been artistic director of the Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione / Teatro Nazionale since May 2021, having previously led the Fondazione Teatro Piemonte Europa and the independent company Teatro di Dioniso. His productions have won, amongst others, the Flaiano International Award for his direction of David Ives’s *Venus in Fur* in 2017, the 2009 Ubu Award for his direction of A. Tarantino’s *Quattro Atti Profani*, and the National Association of Theatre Critics’ Award, again for *Quattro Atti Profani* and for *Shakespeare/Venus and Adonis*. In 2004, Jon Fosse’s Inverno received the Ubu Prize for the best foreign play staged in Italy. Also in 2004, he won the Hystrio Prize for directing Fellini’s Giulietta. In 1992, he received a special mention at the Melbourne Fringe Arts Festival as best performer for his portrayal of Ella by H. Achternbusch in English. In 2019, he was nominated for the Ubu Awards for his direction and sound design of Primo Levi’s *If This Is a Man*. Malosti has directed works by Nyman, Tutino, Glass, Corghi and Cage, often in world premieres, and Mozart’s *The Marriage of Figaro* for the Teatro Regio in Turin. He has also directed several radio productions for Rai Radio3. Among his most recent projects are the opera productions of Il viaggio di G. Mastorna by Matteo D’Amico, based on Fellini, and Lazarus by David Bowie and Enda Walsh, co-produced by the LAC.
As an actor, he worked for almost a decade with Luca Ronconi, and in film with Mimmo Calopresti, Franco Battiato and Mario Martone. He played Manfred (Schumann/Byron) under Noseda’s baton. He directed the Acting School of the Teatro Stabile di Torino from 2010 to 2018. His translation of William Shakespeare’s I Poemetti was published in late November 2022 as part of Einaudi Editore’s poetry series. For his work as director of ERT / Teatro Nazionale in 2023, he received the Enriquez Prize and the Volponi Plaque.
A graduate of the Paolo Grassi School of Dramatic Art, she trained under Luca Ronconi and Massimo Castri. She made her debut with Peter Stein at the Greek Theatre in Syracuse and in Europe’s most important ancient theatres. She has starred in productions directed by Toni Servillo, Luís Pasqual, Pascal Rambert, Valter Malosti, Martin Kušej, Marco Bellocchio, Andrée Ruth Shammah, Marco Baliani, Davide Livermore, Veronica Cruciani, Simone Toni and Jacopo Gassmann, for whom she played Iphigenia in *Iphigenia in Tauris* at the Greek Theatre in Syracuse in 2022. For her role as Giacinta in La Trilogia della Villeggiatura, directed by Toni Servillo, she won the ETI Gli Olimpici del Teatro Award for Best Emerging Actress and the Virginia Reiter Award; for her performance in Blackbird, directed by Luís Pasqual, she received the Marisa Bellisario Award and the Duse Award for Best Young Theatre Actress, as well as the ‘Amici di Milano per i giovani’ International Award. She was a finalist for the Ubu Award for Best Actress in 2008 for the role of Giacinta and in 2021 for her performances in Cleopatràs by Giovanni Testori, directed by Valter Malosti, and in Sorelle, written and directed by Pascal Rambert. She is the narrator of Margaret Mitchell’s *Gone with the Wind* and Azar Nafisi’s *Reading Lolita in Tehran*, audiobooks produced by Storytel. She plays the Pale Girl in Paolo Sorrentino’s *The Great Beauty*, winner of the 2014 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
She recently performed at the Nuovo Teatro delle Passioni in Modena in *Erodiàs + Mater strangosciàs*, a project by Sandro Lombardi, the long-standing performer of Testori’s *Tre lai*, conceived as an ideal handover from actor to actress. She is also reprising *Accabadora*, based on the novel by Michela Murgia, adapted for the stage by Carlotta Corradi and directed by Veronica Cruciani. In the 2023/24 season, she will make her debut in Durante, written and directed by Pascal Rambert.
