On Saturday May 25th, at the auditorium of the laboratory “Musica d’attracco”, placed in via Procaccia, in the town of Monopoli, the narrative - show “Life, death and miracles of S. Nicholas the greatest”, written, directed and interpreted by Paolo Panaro in collaboration with the baritone Angelo De Leopardi, will be performed. Angelo De Leonardis is responsible for the musical consulting; lights and technical organizing by Annalisa Pellegrini.
It is the main performance of “Talking Lands” Project which partners are: the Municipality of Monopoli (Lead Partner), the Municipality of Fasano, the Municipality of Grottaglie, Apulian Public Theatre, the Region of Western Greece, the Region of Ionian Island, the Municipality of Parga. The enhancement aimed to the cultural exchange and experience between Italy and Greece is the aim of the project.
This was the main performance of “Talking Lands” project, that will be repeated on the 26th May in Fasano and on the 27th in Grottaglie at Teatro Monticello.
Thanks to his experience of 20 years and more, Paolo Panaro focuses his researches in the field of the narrative theatre with the adaptation for the performance on the stage of many masterpieces that belong to different historical periods and many events from our traditions. Within “Talking Lands”, his researches focused on the translation of Saint Nicholas’s bones.
The technique of the narrative theatre, the southern “cunto” and the art of the “canterini” from Veneto and Lombardia have played a key-role within the planning of this event. An alternation between the interpretation of the actor-narrator and the musical and liturgical pieces that belong to the orthodox and western traditions were organically the soundtrack for the development of the plot.
Apulia region was a province within the huge Byzantine Empire. After the fall of Rome, over five centuries, Apulian people and their Greek neighbors spoke, ate, dressed, prayed and sang in the same ways. The worship of Saint Nicholas, link between East and West, is the most evident proof of those times. His worship had origins in Myra, but it spread fast in Bysantium and then it developed in the rest of Europe up to the boundary lines of the orthodox Russia as well. Between the two coasts of the Adriatic Sea, only the legend of the “Hyperaghios”( the Greatest Saint) is the most popular and loved. Still today, Saint Nicholas is the only saint, capable of making the miracle: the rapprochement between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, divided because of the schism thousand years ago.