Nearly one hundred pages long in its unabridged version, De profundis (the title was given to it when it was first partially published five years after its author's death) is one of the most famous letters ever written. Intended in the original for only one person, the young Lord Alfred Douglas known as Bosie, it was written during the second of the two years of hard imprisonment Oscar Wilde was sentenced to for homosexuality and contains the whole story of the fatal friendship between the famous writer and the vicious, selfish, and wayward young aristocrat. The vivid evocation of the luxurious and amoral life led by the couple is now seen through the eyes of a man whom suffering has profoundly changed-not in the sense of making him a repentant bigot, but rather of making him realize the importance of those values, especially artistic ones, which his greed for worldly experiences had caused him to neglect.
Hence the interpretation of Christ as the supreme artist whose existence was a poem. Even from redeemed sinner Wilde remains an aesthete, while the playwright's eloquence, which never fails him, transforms the torrential outburst into a performance from great entertainer.
Masolino d'Amico

Wilde's long letter is a dialogue in the absence of/with Bosie, who not only always denied receiving this missive but also ever knowing of its existence. The cell where Wilde is imprisoned thus becomes Wilde's own brain as he delves into the depths between memories and the present and recognizes himself as more mature than his anagraphic age and arrives at an awareness that is peculiar to an age more advanced than his own, not to chance Wilde will narrowly survive the prison experience. He therefore discovers the meaning of pain allowing to this epistle written "in carcere et vinculis" to set him free.
In our performance, projections and audio aids accompany the interpretive narrative, as do the lights that mark internal time more than space: the musical contributions create a breath, almost to marking Wilde's appointments with the writing of the letter, which went on for nearly three months.
The letter was revealed in its entirety only in 1959, in an attempt to protect to the last the intimacy of a man made public for too long when he was alive, in a world perhaps much freer from prejudice. But even today this writing makes us reflect on such topical issues as the non-ratification of the motion put forward at the UN by France that proposed a resolution for the decriminalization of homosexuality. Times and situations that seem extremely distant and unacceptable to us are still (unfortunately) realities in many parts of the world, but also in many parts of us where considering "sin and suffering as holy things sounds very dangerous."
Riccardo Massai

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