../ Anita dei due mondi (Anita of the two worlds)
solo for Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro, or Anita Garibaldi
«…She comes from the heart, mariner’s bride.
But hero’s wife comes from seaside.
She comes from the heart, mariner’s bride.
But if he is a hero, she waits his comeback.
She comes from the heart, mariner’s bride.
But if two people from seaside meet each other,
they are heroes
they are heroes…»
Today, in Ravenna (Italy), we come back where Giuseppe Garibaldi left Anita, his bride, forever. It was the 4th of August 1849 and Anita was pregnant with her fifth child. A short life spent between South America and Europe, Laguna, in Brasil, and Mandriole, her village in Italy, near Ravenna; between nature and culture, the feminine and the masculine, between feeling and realizing, travel and care, movement and expectation, freedom and love. Today, body and voice, Luisa Cottifogli meets Anita, her memory and her vitality: a woman who was both many women and many men. She was a girl who grew up as a boy in Laguna, Brasil, wild and in love with her father; at fourteen years old she married and that was an unforgivable violence. Then she met José Garibaldi and she discovered love, passion and wars, fought together in South America. She was a mother, a wife, a jealous and restless one, a fighter till the end of her life that ended in Italy, in Mandriole.
Anita’s double world is a solo but at the same time you hear more than one voice: Luisa Cottifogli sings and plays, musicians play music and rhythm, and also the old man’s voice which comments old images that pass during the performance, as a panorama made to remember.
Those images, painted in 1861-62, come from Brown University in Rhode Island (Usa) and their projection seems like a “cinema before cinema”, just a panorama which told history to people before Lumière brother ‘s invention.
In Anita’s double world, Luisa Cottifogli is a woman who recalls Anita’s life and emotions and music keeps together theatre, voice, poetry, painting and tales.
Anita dei due mondi - Luisa Cottifogli
«…Fu la sera del quattro di agosto
alle otto.
Ma il silenzio non durò molto a lungo
perché vennero i cani
che volevano sbranare il suo corpo
sbranarlo
come la nostra terra.
Fu per poco
ma fu premonizione
un preludio del dopo
di quando la terra in Romagna
sarebbe stata sbranata
davvero
dalle fabbriche, le costruzioni,
il porto e il petrolio,
il fuoco e le fiamme, ma sporche,
e il mare da dove veniva l’eroe
da dove veniva la sposa
il mare sempre più lontano
come una cosa preziosa
una cosa perduta
che però se la guardi
è speranza.»
Press
A Ravenna Festival which starts with the best cards, with an excellent Luisa Cottifogli (…)
Cottifogli’s voice rises powerful, boisterous, accompanied by a band of very good musicians (…)
Behind her the events of the hero of the two worlds narrated by the video of “Panorama Garibaldi” (…) and here Garibaldi becomes only a picture-card, since the interpreter is Anita. An old man-like voice tells the exploits of Garibaldi: it’s the voice of Enzo Vetrano also directing together with Stefano Randisi.
Some drops of rain fall on the audience who are kept on seats, fascinated by the story (…)
Cottifogli sings the only dialect song in the show, a serenade: she moves to a niche in the wall and she remains alone, lit, like appearing at a window . And her voice comes out powerful, it makes one shiver (…)
The rain has been averted, the audience stand up enthusiastic and bestow a great applause to all the interpreters and musicians.
www.ravennanotizie.it, Stazio
A show which stands between concert and theatre , with intense and touching acting, dreaming atmospheres at intervals, and the sea nearby thread of the event: a wonderful performance.
Francesco Farinelli Il Resto del Carlino