Vangelo

Biography

Vangelo takes its origin from the suggestions of the music composed by Enzo Avitabile, from poetical suggestions, and from the memories of the Croatian actors and dancers who, with their experience and professionalism, will put on stage themselves, their stories and their lives, often deeply marked by the traumatic events of a cruel war that has reshaped the history, places and boundaries of their native land; the boundaries that during the creation of Vangelo were overtaken by huge masses of people fleeing terrible wars in search of shelter in the Old Continent.

Pippo Delbono Company
Concept, direction, video projections ― Pippo Delbono
Performers ― Gianluca Ballarè, Bobò, Margherita Clemente, Pippo Delbono, Ilaria Distante, Simone Goggiano, Mario Intruglio, Nelson Lariccia, Gianni Parenti, Alma Prica, Pepe Robledo, Grazia Spinella, Nina Violić, Safi Zakria, Mirta Zečević, the video projections feature refugees from the PIAM housing unit in Asti (Italy), the actors of the Pippo Delbono Company and the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb
Original music for orchestra and polyphonic choir ― Enzo Avitabile
Conductor ― Gabriele Di Iorio
Set ― Claude Santerre
Costumes ― Antonella Cannarozzi
Light designer and technical manager ― Fabio Sajiz
Light and video ― Orlando Bolognesi
Sound ― Matteo Ciardi
Chief machinist ― Gianluca Bolla
Machinist ― Fabrizio Orlandi/Enrico Zucchelli
Wardrobe ― Elena Giampaoli
Managers ― Silvia Cassanelli, Alessandra Vinanti
Tour manager ― Raffaella Ciuffreda
Set and costume workshops ― Croatian National Theatre of Zagreb
Production ― Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Croatian National Theatre of Zagreb
Co-production ― Théâtre Vidy Lausanne, Maison de la culture d’Amiens – Centre de Création et de Production, Théâtre de Liège
In collaboration with ― Cinémathèque suisse in Lausanne, Teatro Comunale Bologna
Special thanks ― Fabrice Aragno, Antoine Bataille, Francesca Catricalà, Teatro Nuovo di Mirandola
Premiere ― 12 January 2016

Enzo Avitabile’s sumptuous melodies and sounds put a decisive mark on the show as they flutter from the clear melodic lines of highbrow tradition to the ‘dirtier’ sounds of peasant religious songs, from the stillness of ancient rituals to the convulsive fits that run between the different shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Enrico Fiore | Controscena blog
Today, more than ever, the world is bleeding, and Pippo Delbono, true to his faith in the human being which goes beyond dogmas and laws, presents a vision of the Gospels that embraces free love and joy. The Italian artist does not shun viscerality and pathos, and wins us over. His ultracharismatic theatre has healing power.

Marie-Pierre Genecand | Le Temps
A Gospel that Delbono wishes to dedicate ‘to the most revolutionary personality of our time: Pope Francis, with his testimony of compassion and mercy’.

Michele Sciancalepore | Avvenire
Everything comes in fragments, yet in this collage of crazed splinters we find poetry at work. The testimony of Safi Zakria, a refugee who sits in the audience, is a moving tale of his flight for freedom, of the death of his best friend at sea, of struggle for survival. The last shall be the first. Will the kingdom of heaven really be theirs?

Katia Ippaso | La nuova ecologia
We are witnesses for an hour and 40 minutes to a secular Gospel in which love reigns universally, with no distinction of sorts.

Mario Di Calo | Cultura e Spettacolo
Pippo once again ‘interprets’ or rather just ‘is’ Pippo, speaking through the mike in screams and whispers, climbing down from the stage and up again, bringing the audience and the performers together into the same universe, or letting us all into his own closed-up world, into his own part: he is, yet again, the son, the artist, the homosexual, the HIV-positive.

Anna Bandettini | Repubblica blog
The Italian agitator conjures Pasolini and Saint Augustine, Led Zeppelin and a popular and religious iconography that brings us to confront personal memories and contemporary tragedies. First among these are migrations’ waves, tearing the continent apart.

Gérald Cordonier | 24Heure