Orlando Furioso and the theater of passions

Speakers: Lina Bolzoni, Serena Pezzini, Peppe Servillo

Today, it is possible to rediscover the charm of a poem like Ariosto’s classic, which became famous throughout Europe for its presentation of human life and passions, fascinating even illiterate men and women who learned it from memory and identified their own stories and feelings in its text. Lina Bolzoni will be exploring Orlando Furioso by focusing on the relationship between love and madness, in which the author echoes Erasmus, proposing that the remedy to fanaticism and intolerance is the ability to recognise your own madness. Serena Pezzini will be presenting the Galassia Ariosto digital archive, created by a research group at the Scuola Normale and funded by the European Community, where it is possible to navigate between words and images, among the illustrated editions of the poem and the intricate network of relationships that this format can create between new and old poems.  A video will also be screened in the gardens of Villa la Farnesina, with the participation of actors such as Peppe Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto and Roberto Herlitzka, who will be reading the verses of the poem following the narrative thread of Angelica’s escape.