Live! Exploring Alberto Savinio’s Theater

 

April 06, 2018

Exploring Alberto Savinio’s Theater Work with Luca Valentino

Alberto Savinio experimented with every theatrical genre available to him throughout his career, working as a composer, costume and set designer, playwright, librettist, stage director, and theatre critic. In discussing a selection of this eclectic twentieth-century master’s theater productions, operas, and radio dramas, Luca Valentino will shed light upon the creative process behind this highly-original artist’s combinations of sound, image, and word. Featuring excerpts from original radio performances, this presentation will begin with Savinio’s involvement with the Parisian avant-garde milieu before WWI, touch on his critical-yet-cautious public production during the Fascist Ventennio, and culminate in his post-WWII resurgence, manifested by his works for the Italian National Radio and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival, as well as Milan’s Piccolo Teatro and Teatro alla Scala.

Note: This is the first of two evenings organized, in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Culture, by the Center for Italian Modern Art on the occasion of its Alberto Savinio exhibition. It will take place at CIMA, at 421 Broome Street in SoHo. Click here for more information on the second half of the program, to be presented at the Italian Institute of Culture at 670 Park Avenue on Monday, April 9.

Luca Valentino is Professor of Performing Arts at the Conservatory of Music of Alessandria, Italy, where he is also Artistic Director of Scatola Sonora, an international festival of small-scale opera and musical theater named after a collection of Alberto Savinio’s writings. Over the course of his three decades directing for the stage, Valentino has established himself as an international expert on Savinio—writing numerous essays on the artist and adapting his works for performance on stages around the world. Amongst other accolades, his book on Savinio’s theater, L’arte impura (1991), received the Premio Silvio D’Amico from Italy’s National Drama Institute.

Missed the event? Watch the video here!