(toskanews) – Letters, photographs, original documents, poems, scripts, his Sicily so present in his works. In Rome, at Palazzo Firenze, headquarters of the Dante Alighieri Society, the exhibition Scenes, voices, accents, writings: the infinite theater of Andrea Camilleri (open until 9 November), tells the story of the much-loved Sicilian writer, from his birth to his monologue Conversation on Tiresias pronounced in 2018 in the Greek Theater of Syracuse, a year before his death. The exhibition is part of the project to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Camilleri’s birth and above all highlights his theatricality in every aspect of his life.
In Rome, the exhibition on Andrea Camilleri
The curator, critic, writer and historian of Italian literature, Giulio Ferroni, explains: «Scenes, voices, words, writings, Camilleri is all of this within a dimension that we could say of conceiving life as a continuous relationship, a plot, and therefore theatre. Ultimately he has done many things but always under the sign of the theatrical horizon, of a theatricality which is that very particular one of Sicily, not only of Sicily in general but of its South-Western Sicily, which is even that of Pirandello”.
Created by the Dante Alighieri Society in collaboration with the Andrea Camilleri Fund (with the production of Arthemisia), the exhibition is divided into sections that express his conception of the world as a stage and highlight the importance of personal relationships, friendships and acquaintances maintained over the years with central figures of twentieth-century culture. From the first family photos, the first poems, his youth, with the beginning of his theatrical activity in Rome, to Camilleri as a theater director, between Beckett and Pirandello.
«The thing that I had never noticed – explained Ferroni – is that the relationship with Pirandello is rooted in Camilleri’s own family life, in Porto Empedocle his father dealt with the trade of something that Pirandello’s father also dealt with, and there was probably Pirandello’s visit to the grandmother’s house where the child Camilleri was staying».
From Rai to Montalbano, to the theatre
A part is dedicated to his activity for Rai, with scripts and screenplays for radio and TV. We then move on to the narrative, from The course of things published in ’78, at the invention of Montalbano, and the Sicilian glossary he wrote by hand is also on display. Finally, his all-round interest in art, his international success, his curiosity kept alive until the end, even when he was blind.
«The culmination is that formidable conversation on Tiresias that he held in the Greek Theater of Syracuse, where he seems to summarize not only his entire life but the entire meaning of his relationship with culture» concluded the curator.
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