With high-level shows and cultural initiatives and with the desire to be a meeting and aggregation place for the public, the Teatro Manzoni in Rome directed by Pietro Longhi kicks off the 2024/25 season.
To inaugurate the Prose calendar, an intense tribute to the greatest interpreter of French song, EDITH PIAF – The nightingale no longer singsin scena until to October 13th. Written and performed by Melania Giglio, joined on stage by Martino Duane directed by Daniele Salvo, the show retraces, through an unpublished text and songs performed live, the days that preceded Edith’s historic performance on the stage of the Olympia in Paris, from the end of 1960 until to the spring of 1961.
It is 1960, in Édith Piaf’s apartment. A series of events followed one another in the life of this little woman. Mourning, accidents, loves, arguments, loneliness, alcohol, joys, successes and songs: everything hit her like a hurricane, the nightingale no longer sings. Arthritis made her hunchbacked, alcohol and medicines made her swollen and hairless, bereavements hurt her will to live. But suddenly someone knocks on his door and comes to desecrate this “darkness”. It’s Bruno Coquatrix, the manager of Olympia.
This story, enriched by songs performed strictly live (among others The accordionist, La vie en rose, Milord), wants to be a tribute to one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking voices of modern song. “We want to remember Édith Piaf with simplicity and clarity”, explains director Daniele Salvo. “We don’t want to imitate his movements or copy his exterior. Instead, let us try to get closer to his soul with Mozartian lightness, to reach the center of his chest to evoke for an instant, with attention and respect, his incredible talent. Today more than ever, in these years empty of impulses and needs, we need his warmth, his light, the power of his voice and the beat of his little heart which still today, even if it is no longer, beats tirelessly. And that little heart of his will never stop”.
The sets are by Fabiana Di Marco, the costumes by Giovanni Ciacci.
In the report by Antonella Pallante, edited by Marco Cortelli, the interview with Melania Giglio
