As part of the 2023 Venice Carnival “Take Your Time For The Original Signs” programme, on Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 February, two shows will be staged in the theatres of the historic city of Venice, between musicals and Commedia dell’Arte.
On Saturday, February 4 at Teatro ai Frari, with two replicas at 5 and 9 PM, the musical “La storia della mia vita”, an Italian adaptation of “The Story of my Life” written by Neil Bartram and Brian Hill, will be performed for the first time in Italy, directed by Ilaria Deangelis. It is a one-act play lasting about 90 minutes that will bring live music to the stage and will consist of 17 songs, including comic and dramatic moments and a surprise at the beginning and end of the show. Two characters on stage, Thomas Weaver (played by Fabrizio Voghera) and Alvin Kelby (played by Francesco Nardo), who are inseparable childhood friends in a small town around the world. A tribute to the power of friendship and the encounters that change our lives forever.
The star of great musicals and popular operas, Fabrizio Voghera counts among his roles those of Quasimodo and Frollo in Riccardo Cocciante’s “Notre Dame de Paris”, produced by Davi Zard, as well as that of Freder in “Metropolis”, the musical with music by Queen, freely adapted from the film by Fritz Lang. He will be joined by the Venetian Francesco Nardo, a singer and performer who, in the course of his career, has developed various musical experiences and formations, concerts in Italy and abroad, recordings and collaborations as a vocalist.
On Sunday 5 at the Teatro a l’Avogaria, at 6 PM, “Bricola e Regina” will come to life, two masked characters from the “modern” Commedia dell’Arte, born from the creativity and Venetian roots of the two actors Giorgio Bertan and Eleonora Fuser. It is an actor-author genre show in which the two characters, freely leaving the Ospizio di S. Lorenzo, converse on everything and everyone, between universal themes and everyday life, alternating the chronicle with anecdotes, youthful memories with the problems of old age. Their history as a couple, past memories, regrets, disappointments, fears, and cynicism, alternate between quarrels, jokes and tenderness on the bench of their tasty world.
A specialist in Commedia Dell’Arte techniques and a founding member of TAG Teatro, Giorgio Bertan has been performing various original canovacci, as well as plays by Gozzi, Goldoni and Shakespeare, throughout Europe since 1991. In addition to his acting activity, he also carries out a fervent directing activity and holds stages on the Commedia dell’Arte and the use of the mask, in Italy and abroad. Joining him on stage will be Eleonora Fuser, also one of the founders of TAG Teatro in Venice and specialised in Commedia Dell’Arte techniques. The performer of various roles in theatre and cinema, directed by directors of national and international fame, Eleonora also combines her profession as an actress with a fertile training activity that sees her as a director and teacher in various Venetian realities.
