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ADRIANA ASTI - MARCO TULLIO GIORDANA
To say that Carlo Porta (Milan, 1775 - Milan, 1821) and Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli (Rome, 1791 - Rome,1863) are the greatest exponents of 19th-century dialect poetry is to do them an injustice. They are two very great poets (or rather novelists, we shall see later why) who may well vault to the heights of their contemporaries Foscolo (Zante, 1778 - Turnham Green, 1827) or Leopardi (Recanati, 1798 - Naples, 1837), whose value is reductively perceived because of their choice to express themselves in the "plebeian" mother tongue rather than in the literary idiom that constitutes of this almost a "translation." If at least part of their poetic corpus had been written in Italian (as Berchet, Manzoni and others will also do), their notoriety would probably be much more extensive.
Why consider Belli and Porta as novelists? The object of their research is the accurate description of social patterns and behaviors, of unintentional (but perhaps not) historical frescoes, of tableaux-vivants and dialogues ready for the theater capable of restoring their time with such complexity and richness of nuance from greatly dilating the boundaries of poetry. Excluding from this context a more in-depth examination, those who wish can take advantage of Dante Isella's illuminating work (in C. Porta, Poesie, to edited by D. I., Milan-Naples, Ricciardi, 1958, pp. XI-XXIX). Here I would like to say only about the criterion adopted in the "translation" in order to remain faithful and not lose the aristo-becherous blend of donna Fabia: a mixture of archaisms, fine idioms and elegant terms mixed with the current language, not without the coquetry of slipping in some nice vulgarity. This is the world of the late 18th-century Lombard aristocracy, which relies its economy on immense estates and agrarian income that allows for the good life in the city and the outpouring of vacationing in the splendid sumptuous Lombard mansions. With attached army of servants, maids, factors, gardeners, cooks, scullery maids, coachmen, the King's most royalist butler, and finally the ever-present priest of the house, whose good offices are supposed to ensure the dolce vita in the afterlife while they enjoy the privileges of the hereafter beautifully. This explains why there remain a few monkish Milanese words in the queue (Fabron, tal, qual, ugual, simil, infallibil, mandare to dar via, etc ) and the scurrilous vezzi that never leave the gentlemen, a kind of coarse parallel language that runs through the conversation like the ditch beside the road.
Of the Porta, I also intended to respect going in and out of the canon of metrics, according to the mood of the moment: to stretches courtly, elsewhere "practical," with no regard for infringement.
The poetry in Milanese, for those few who speak it (and let it be clear that to understand it all I have to make an effort myself!) is hilarious. To make to everyone understand it, the show adds a live countersong: Adriana, patiently waiting for the film to end (as in a Fabio Mauri or Bob Wilson installation) and then gracefully pitting the translation. I first worked with Adriana Asti in 1994, in the film Pasolini, un delitto italiano. We then met again over time: La meglio gioventù (2003), Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti (2005), until to a few months ago in Nome di donna. from always we would have liked to do something together dedicated to Porta, deity of both meneghini. Of course, one has to imagine the Milan of the paintings of Piccio (Giovanni Carnevali), Carlo Canella, Giuseppe Elena, Giuseppe Molteni or the portraits of Andrea Appiani and Francesco Hayez.
Adriana's costume, rather than harking back to early 19th century fashion (with a Napoleonic predilection for light fabrics and petticoats and shawls) echoes that of the earlier decades before the Revolution: the black in which Donna Fabia wraps herself is that of a Goyesque Maja vestida who regrets Austrian rule, perhaps even its Spanish antecedent. She wears mourning, but not for family reasons, but for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that flew spitefully away.
The house priest is played from Andreapietro Anselmi, obliged by stomach languor to conniving silent assent.
Marco Tullio Giordana
from Charles Door
film and installation by Marco Tullio Giordana
with** Adriana Asti **as Donna Fabia
and **Andreapietro Anselmi **as Don Sigismondo.
production Spoleto 61 Festival dei 2Mondi
_The film was made for the Spoleto Festival thanks to the collaboration of Federico Annicchiarico, Elisabetta Antico, Lina Cardone, Elena Chiappa, Pierpaolo De Mejo, Luigi Piccolo, Marta Rinaldi, Roberto Paglialunga, Salvatore Romeo, Francesca Livia Sartori, Sergio Rossi, Federico Sciarrini, Pietro Valsecchi, and Mimmo Verdesca. _
Throughout her theatrical career she has been directed by, among others, from Strehler, Visconti, Ronconi, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, Alfredo Arias interpreting with recognized mastery great characters of classical and modern theater. She has inspired authors such as Ginzburg, Siciliano, Patroni Griffi, Cesare Musatti and Franca Valeri, who have created for her unforgettable protagonists for our stages. from many years she also acts in French and has managed to to introduce some of her heroines, with great success, on the stages of Paris. She has written two plays, Dear Professor and Alcohol, performed for more than 200 performances, and two novels published in France, Rue Ferou and Se souvenir et oublier. The latter also published in Italy from Edizioni Portaparole under the title Ricordare e dimenticare. She has participated to more than 60 films directed by, among others, from Visconti, De Sica, Pasolini, Bertolucci, Bolognini, Brass, Giordana, Techiné and Bunuel._ Stramilano_, nostalgia in music for her city, and_ Ja das Meer ist blau_, poems and songs by Brecht and Weill, shows from she devised, see her in her new role as a singer. For her performances she has received the Ennio Flaiano Award, three Maschere d'oro, four Nastri d'argento, the David di Donatello, the Grolla d'oro, the De Sica Award and the Ciak d'oro. He has been a Grand Officer of the Italian Republic since 2004. In 2009 Robert Wilson directed her in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. In 2011 she was awarded the title of Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et de Lettres. In 2013 she starred in_ The Human Voice/The Beautiful Indifferent_ by Jean Cocteau directed from Benoit Jacquot. In 2014 she was Alice in _Danza macabra_ by August Strindberg directed by Luca Ronconi, a show with which she toured nationally and internationally until 2016. In 2017 she narrated herself in Memorie di Adriana, a stage adaptation from the book Ricordare e dimenticare, a conversation between Adriana Asti and René De Ceccatty, directed by Andrée Ruth Shammah. Also in 2017, he wrote Un futuro infinito. A short autobiography published from Mondadori. In 2018 she plays the role of _Donna Fabia _in the film Installation by Marco Tullio Giordana, from the poem by Carlo Porta.
Born to Milan in 1950, he made his first film Maledetti vi Amerò in 1980. In 1981 he made La Caduta degli Angeli Ribelli (The Fall of the Rebel Angels), in 1982 the video Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, inspired by Benjamin Britten's score, in 1983 he shot Notti e nebbie (Nights and Fogs) for television, based on Carlo Castellaneta's novel of the same name, and in 1988 Appuntamento to Liverpool. In 1991 he shot La neve sul fuoco, an episode of the film La domenica specialmente. In 1994 he participated in the collective film L'Unico Paese al Mondo, and in 1995 he made Pasolini, un delitto italiano. In 1996 he produced and made for RAI and UNICEF the film Scarpette bianche, in 1997 he made the montage film La rovina della patria, in 2000 he made_ I Cento Passi_ and in 2003 the two-part saga of_ La meglio gioventù_. In 2005 he directed Quando sei nato non puoi più nascondereti, in 2008 Sanguepazzo, in 2012 Romanzo di una strage and in 2015 Lea. In 2016 he made the film_ I due soldati_ and in 2017 Nome di donna. In 1990 he directed Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore for the Teatro Verdi in Trieste and in 1997 Enzo Siciliano's Morte di Galeazzo Ciano for the Stabile di Torino. In 2012 he staged Tom Stoppard's trilogy_ The Coast of Utopia _for Stabile di Torino and Teatro di Roma and in 2015, for Stabile di Torino and Stabile del Veneto Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary. In 2016 he directed the Compagnia di Teatro di Luca De Filippo in _Questi fantasmi! _by Eduardo De Filippo. He published the novel _Secret Life of the Lord of Machines _(Milan, 1990) and the essay Pasolini, an Italian Crime (Milan, 1994) in addition to the screenplays (in collaboration) of several of his films. In 2012 he published, together to Marco Perisse, the translation of Tom Stoppard's The Coast ofUtopia (La sponda dell'Utopia, Palermo 2012).