by Adriano Bolognino e Rosaria di Maro

Original Music
Giuseppe Villarosa

Lighting Design
Gianni Staropoli

Set Design
Loris Giancola

Costumes
Santi Rinciari

In collaboration with
Teatro Stabile del Veneto
Teatro Comunale Città di Vicenza

Winning choreography of the Danza&Danza Award for Best Italian Production – Middle Scale (2024)

Debut 7, December 2024, Teatro Verdi – Padova

No Opera, Eleonora Duse:

“Acting? What an ugly word! If it were just acting; I feel I never knew how to act, nor will I ever know how to act! Those poor women in my comedies have entered my heart and mind so deeply that while I try to make my listeners understand them as best I can, almost as if I wanted to comfort them… it is they who, little by little, have ended up comforting me! How—and why, and since when—this affectionate, inexplicable, and undeniable “exchange” between those women and me occurred… it would be too long and difficult to explain precisely. The fact is that, while everyone distrusts women, I get along very well with them! I don’t care if they’ve lied, if they’ve betrayed; if they have sinned, if they were born perverse, as long as I feel that they have cried, have suffered, whether to lie or to betray or to love… I place myself with them and I search them not out of a mania for suffering but because female grief is greater and more detailed, sweeter and more complete than that granted by men!

The work is divided in two, and the division follows Duse’s march toward an increasingly self-aware art. A first part “exquisitely artificial” and a final Duse, now elderly, “all immaculate light.” It is a NON-Opera, a hymn to women.

Duration 60 minutes