Universi Sconosciuti
– Emozioni vicine, tradizioni lontane

DESCRIPTION

Taking inspiration from Gaetano Donizetti’s semi-serious opera Il Furioso nell’isola di S. Domingo, with libretto by Jacopo Ferretti, we will explore some important and topical educational issues: the theme of the unknown and emotional education.

How will we do this?

Through two engaging workshops:

Musical and vocal workshop – The opera Il Furioso nell’isola di S. Domingo, written in 1832, deals primarily with the feelings of a man. In fact, the protagonist is Cardenio, who shows his fragility and pain. The theme encourages us to talk about emotional education, self-legitimisation, feeling and expressing one’s feelings while respecting others, and suggests the theme of the unknown and the different. In this workshop, we will address these important topics with the delicacy, depth and care that the voice and singing allow us to do. Through psychophonetic vocalisations, vocal and bodily gestures and songs selected from the opera itself, we will discover the unknown within ourselves. We will explore parts of the body that vibrate more than others, activate new resonators and discover unknown and new vibrating parts.

Artistic workshop – The theme of the unknown is also central to the workshop, but in this case it is suggested by the exotic setting of the story. The “unknown” now becomes the set of customs and traditions belonging to distant cultures different from our own, where face painting often takes on an identity-defining character. Even before having a purely aesthetic value, face paint has always had an important symbolic value among indigenous peoples, and not only them. Religious ceremonies, propitiatory rites, festivities, folk dances, war rituals: every occasion required a precise pictorial decoration of the face using specific shapes and colours. First and foremost was the importance of painting one’s face as a sign of belonging to a tribe.

The workshop offers the opportunity to experiment with face paint, transferred for technical reasons and convenience onto a paper mask, as a real distinctive element and sign of belonging to a community, a tribe in fact. The mask, an element clearly belonging to the world of theatre and storytelling, becomes a tool for participating in community life.