‘A sciaveca

Sciaveca is the term that along the Tyrrhenian stretch of the Phlegraean Fields fishermen use to refer to the from trawl net proper to fishing inshore, also always soiled with muddy seaweed and sludge. The warp of its dense plots refers, in Mimmo Borrelli's dramaturgical imagination, to the tangled heritage of facts, memories, mythologies, of one of Campania's richest territories in history. Through a meticulous collection of popular testimonies, the author has constructed a mighty opera in ten cantos and three thousand loose endecasyllables, which composes an archaic but extraordinarily topical epic.The story is that of a missing man, who died at sea, who after a year or so of his disappearance returns, incredibly, to the land. Between the wrathful astonishment of his killers, who shout vociferously for a miracle, and personal exhaustion mixed to bewilderment, Tonino Barbone - that is the protagonist's name - believes that everything happened the night before his messianic advent. But the one who intones the fugues of the tale is the Sea, which refreshes and clarifies the mnemonic debauchery of our stymied Messiah.