LA VOCE UMANA
IL BELL’INDIFFERENTE

After the great success of Happy Days (by Samuel Beckett, directed by Robert Wilson), Adriana Asti, undisputed star of Theater and Cinema, returns to Spoleto with an actress test dedicated to Jean Cocteau. With the prestigious staging of Benoît Jacquot, a great director of French cinema who for the first time measures himself with the boards of the stage.

The human voice

A woman on the phone, in her room from bed, clinging to the faint voice of the man who has left her for another. The famous one-act play - an intense monologue by the protagonist - dramatically traces the parable of love ended.

The beautiful indifferent

Written for Edith Piaf, another famous female monologue about the end of love. In the presence of a mute and indifferent male figure.

"The two plays follow each other, first The Human Voice, then The Beautiful Indifferent. No intermission, just enough time to change to view the scene. The actress will come down from the stage, witness the change of furniture from a chair from the first row, go back up as soon as the scene is ready.

In The Human Voice a sloping floor shows the corner of a room. The walls of the theater with their doors, stairs, fire extinguishers remain visible in the darkness. The actress, to bare feet, can only go up or down the slope of the floor. A bed, a lamp with abat-jour, an armchair, another lamp with abat-jour, a telephone to wire.

Cocteau: "... a room, a character, love, and the banal accessory of modern rooms, the telephone ... (the author) would like the actress to give the impression of bleeding, of losing her blood like a crippled beast, to end the act in a room full of blood."

In The Beautiful Indifferent, the same furniture is arranged in another way, on the same sloping floor, placing some props, doors, windows and keeping the theater walls visible. It passes from a day that ends to a night brightened by the neon lights of the urban exterior.

The two plays, presented below, compose the evidence of a single actress and express the same complaint of a single woman.

Voila."

Benoît Jacquot

Two Kinds of Loneliness. The Human Voice, often considered the expression of female passion for an unfaithful man, should be read and thus acted with a certain self-mockery. Indeed, when Cocteau wrote this monologue in '30, he was inspired to by a personal event. In love with a young poet, for whom he had signed the preface to J'adore in '28, he had transfigured that unhappy love into a woman's telephone despair. One day, Surrealist poet Paul Eluard, who was attending the "rehearsals" together with Russian director Sergey Eisenstein, protested loudly, "Enough! Enough! It's to Desbordes you are phoning!" Somehow, through the female character, Cocteau had put himself on the stage and his own despair. Jean Desbordes will die on July 16, '44, tortured by the Germans and refusing to give the names of his French comrades in the Resistance. He will die heroically. He was not a frivolous man.

Very different The Beautiful Indifferent, written in '40 for Edith Piaf and her partner at the time, the actor Paul Meurisse (famous for his very detached acting style, precisely almost indifferent). The style is more slangy, less "bourgeois," less compassionate. With a more witty and playful tone. Another voice is heard, at once more brutal and more nuanced. The man this time is present, but mute. While the former was absent, or at least abstracted, in the mythical telephone. However in both cases, the woman is alone. But her loneliness is not the same.

René de Ceccatty

Benoît Jacquot is certainly one of France's finest film directors.

From his collaboration with Marguerite Duras, when he began his career in film in the mid-1960s, to the present, he has made twenty-three films that have made him known to both European and American audiences.

His cinema is in Europe much better known in Central and Eastern European countries than in Italy, where news of his successes, such as last year's Les Adieux à la reine at the Berlin Film Festival, bounces back punctually.

This theatrical staging is a first for him on the boards of the stage and is dedicated to the great Adriana Asti.

If Benoît Jacquot needs no introduction, it is not Adriana Asti who needs one, because she is without a shadow of a doubt one of Italy's greatest actresses.

It would be pure rhetoric to get lost in quotations going through the enormous number of roles from she masterfully interpreted, but it seems interesting to underline, in addition to her immense talent, the refined intellectuality that belongs to a very cultured Rome, now dissolved in the past. to that Rome of Natalia Ginzburg, Moravia, Pasolini and Elsa Morante that she assiduously frequented, assimilating deeply its poetic essence.

Perhaps not everyone knows that Adriana Asti is well known and loved in France, where she has often acted in French, making the Asti-Jacquot collaboration exceptionally natural.

And it is certain that Jean Cocteau'sopera will form a perfect triangle with these two artists, and that his Human Voice and his The Beautiful Indifferent will find now more than ever the desire to speak to us with unprecedented intensity and poetic wickedness about our lives.

The Festival dei due Mondi of Spoleto and Il Teatro Metastasio Stabile della Toscana have joined forces to launch this sparkling new production, which after its debut at the Festival will have a long national and international tour.

Paul Magelli

Artistic Director Teatro Metastasio Stabile della Toscana

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BENOÎT JACQUOT

Benoît Jacquot made his debut in 1965 as an assistant director. Between 1970 and 1976 he was involved in making documentaries, and in 1975 he directed his first film, inspired by a short story by F. Dostoïesvski, L'Assassin musicien. After Les Enfants du placard (1976), he made Les Ailes de la colombe(History of Women, 1981) based on the novel by Henry James, and starring from Isabelle Huppert, Dominique Sanda and Michele Placido; then it was the turn of Corps et biens, a detective story adapted from the novel Tendre femelle by James Gunn, and Les Mendiants, based on the novel by Louis-René Desforêts (1986). With La Désenchantée (1989), starring from Judith Godrèche, she moved away from auteur cinema. La Fille seule (1995), with Virginie Ledoyen, was praised by the international press. Le Septième ciel (1997) with Sandrine Kiberlain and Vincent Lindon is his first major success with audiences. In 1998 he found Isabelle Huppert again for the adaptation of a novel by Y. Mishima, L'école de la chair, presented at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1999 he directed Fabrice Lucchini, Vincent Lindon and Isabelle Huppert in Pas de scandale. A rather prolific period followed, punctuated by directing 'costume' films: Marivaux's La Fausse Suivante (2000), with Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Kikerlain and Mathieu Amalric; Sade (2000) with Daniel Auteuil; Tosca (2001) with Angela Georghiu and Roberto Alagna; and Adolphe (2002) with Isabelle Adjani and Stanislas Merhar. In 2003 he shot Princesse Marie with Catherine Deneuve and Heinz Bennent, and in 2006 Gaspard le bandit, with Jean Hughes Anglade and Natacha Régnier. The female figure - central to Benoît Jacquot's cinema - is again celebrated in À tout de suite (2004), L'intouchable (2006) with Isild Le Besco, and Villa Amalia (2008) with Isabelle Huppert. In 2012 he adapted Les faux-Monnayeurs from André Gide's novel for a film starring from Melvil Poupaud, and made Au fond des bois with Isild Le Besco. His opera most recent, which opened the 2012 Berlin Film Festival, is Les Adieux à la Reine, based from a novel by Chantal Thomas, with Lea Seydoux, Diane Kruger, and Virgine Ledoyen. Benoît Jacquot is also a television writer: he has made documentaries on Jacques Lacan, Alfred Deller, Merce Cunningham, and Marguerite Duras. For the small screen he has adapted numerous plays: Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and L'étonnant voyageur, both starring from Fabrice Lucchini, La bête dans la Jungle based from a novel by Henry James (with Delphine Seyrig and Sami Frey), Dans la solitude des champs de coton by Bernard-Marie Koltès, Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée by Alfred de Musset, La Place Royale based from Pierre Corneille. In 2004 he staged Massenet's Werther at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden with Marcelo Alvarez in the title role. The same production was staged at the Opéra Bastille in January 2011, with Jonas Kauffman as Werther. In 2014 he will stage La Traviata at the Opéra Bastille.

ADRIANA ASTI

Throughout her theatrical career she has been directed by, among others, from Strehler, Visconti, Ronconi, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, and Alfredo Arias, interpreting with acknowledged 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. She has participated in 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.

MAURO CONTE

Mauro Conte made his debut as a theater actor in 2007. His shows include Mercury Fur directed by Carlo Emilio Lerici, Il caso Braibanti, directed from Giuseppe Marini and L'Uomo della Sabbia, directed by Luca De Bei. In 2007 he participated in the television program "Decameron" by Daniele Luttazzi. Since 2010 he has played Mercutio in Giuseppe Marini's Romeo and Juliet, now in its third year of performances. Also in 2010 he was chosen by French director André Téchiné as co-star of Impardonnables (presented at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival- Quinzaine des Realizateurs section) alongside André Dussollier, Carole Bouquet and Adriana Asti. In 2010 he is among the winners of the Youth Academy Award. In 2012 he participates in Carmen Giardina's short film Fratelli Minori (with Paolo Sassanelli and Alessio Vassallo) and is in the cast of Mirca Viola's I sogni delle ragazze . In 2013 he was again chosen from André Téchiné to be part of the cast of L'homme qui l'on aimait trop, opposite Catherine Deneuve.

ROBERTO PLATÉ

Artist, painter and set designer, Roberto Platé was born to Buenos Aires in 1940. Influenced by his paternal grandfather, a talented draftsman and painter, he soon became aware of how drawing constituted a privileged means of expression. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich also attracted by the Bauhaus school movement, and upon returning home he joined to the Argentine artistic avant-garde. In 1966 with a dozen artists, including Alfredo Arias, he formed the group TSE (Théâtre Sans Explication). The art collective would later emigrate to Paris when censorship by the military regime ended the period of freedom the avant-garde movement had enjoyed until then. Some of his creations caused a stir for the boldness of his style until later opening the doors of success for him. When his collaboration with the TSE art collective ended in the 1970s, Platé opened up to other genres, theater andopera. He exhibits his installations and paintings to Paris, and also regularly in museums and art galleries in Buenos Aires. He has received numerous awards for his works, and in his long career he has set the stage designs for many shows in the most prestigious theaters in France, Europe, Argentina and the United States.

NICOLETTA HERCOLE

Costume designer for film, theater, television, has collaborated with many Italian and international directors, including, Marco Ferreri, Bolognini, Visconti, Benigni, Tornatore, Margarete Von Trotta, Vanzina, Pieraccioni, Nuti, James Cameron, Richard Loncrain, Julie Taymor, Francis Ford Coppola. He has curated costumes for more than 130 films for film, television and several theatrical productions with Polansky, Barbareschi, Giorgio Ferrara and many others. In the fashion industry, she has collaborated with designers such as Pier Luigi Tricò, Renato Balestra, Valentino, Laura Biagiotti, and Trussardi. She has been a consultant for Bulgari, Tod's Group and Cinecittà Holding. She oversaw the organization of Cinecittà's 70th Anniversary celebrations. She was nominated for Best Costume Designer to three Silver Ribbons, three David di Donatello Awards, an Emmy Award and an Oscar with Milena Canonero. She is currently Advisor for Special Events, External Relations and Patron Project at Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto.

CHRISTIAN GASC

Costume designer for film, theater andopera. He has made costumes for more than 55 films, 19 operas, and 35 plays. He received a César for Philippe de Broca's Le bossu, Patrice Leconte's Ridicule , and Frédéric Mitterrand's Madame Butterfly. He won a Moliére for Oscar Wilde's The Fan of Lady Windermere at the théâtre du Palais-Royal. Among his best-known creations are the costumes for: The Women of the 6th Floor, Farewell, My Queen and The Changing Times, Les Adieux à la Reine, Chocolat.

DANIELE NANNUZZI
Born to Rome in 1949, he began to working in 1966 as his father's assistant in Luigi Comencini's film Incompreso. In 1972 he shot his first film from camera operator, Appassionata, produced from Tonino Cervi. He worked alongside great cinematographers and in 1976 signed photography and direction of the second unit of F. Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, with whom he would collaborate on Il giovane Toscanini and Toscana, in the two Emmy Award-winning films-opera Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, and in the very recent Homage to Roma. He has collaborated with directors such as Lizzani, Brass, Jodorowski, Bondarciuck, Cervi, Bolognini, London, the Frazzi brothers, Oldoini, Negrin, until the magical meeting with Monteleone, director of El Alamein; the film won the David di Donatello, the Golden Globe, the Gianni di Venanzo Award, and a nomination for the 2003 Silver Ribbon. In 2004 he signed the cinematography of Empire, a saga about Ancient Rome produced by Touchstone and Disney. to alongside Boris Eifman he made to St. Petersburg the film version of the ballets Anna Karenina and Onegin. In 2012 Giorgio Ferrara entrusts him with the lighting design for Madama Butterfly at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome and foropera B. Britten at the Spoleto Festival. With Iranian Director Babak Payami he has just finished shooting the film Manhattan Undying in Canada.

JACQUES ROUVEYROLLIS

Jacques Rouveyrollis signs his first "lighting conception" with Les Jelly Roll. After a collaboration with Michel Polnareff he diversifies his opera creating for both live shows and large events. from Joe Dassin to Barbara, from Johnny Hallyday to Charles Aznavour, from Serge Gainsbourg to Michel Sardou, there are many artists and producers who call on the magic of shadows and lights he is able to create. In theater he made his debut in 1983 thanks to a meeting with Jean-Luc Tardieu, who called on his talent for Cocteau Marais, which was followed by hundreds of plays in collaboration with important directors. He wins two Molière for the lights of À tort ou à raison and for La boutique au coin de la rue. He creates the lights for many prestigious operas and ballets. His opera also spreads to every continent illuminating the streets and major landmarks of the world's most beautiful cities.

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