BOMARZO 2007
NOTES ABOUT THE STAGING
Jerry Brignone
Director Jerry Brignone's presentation before the opening at Bomarzo, August 4th 2007
Once again, another work of art about identity. And once again,
the outsider's identity: the outsider's gaze that moulds either the one who
gazes but also the one who is gazed. A gaze that discovers, including himself, through the
unfathomable mirror of the Other. Ineffable.
Outsider the European in the open veins of Latin America, expatriate and repatriate to
an uncertain but tangible and emerging own identity...
Outsiders those millions of Italians that arrived at our harbors, open and
thirsty wounds of a country that was opening up to the world to proclaim its
ascending identity...
Outsider Mujica Lainez, so fascinated as other select spirits before him (Salvador Dalí, Michelangelo Antonioni)
by the magic progression of Monsters emerging in those days from the wild
foliage, sculpted in the peperino and the tufo, the rough local stone of Bomarzo...
Outsider the very same Duke Pier Francesco, sketched out by his prolific pen,
coping with the lot of the brutal normalcy of his fellow men...
Outsiders the American artists that felt in 1967 that Ginastera was more worthy
than what the very same Argentinians (who knows why?) were willing to admit...
Outsider myself, in July 2006, wandering through Bomarzo's streets and falling
in love (as before had already happened to another Argentinian). Not so much with
its monsters, but above all with its scenery and its people...
Outsiders' stories, identities' stories. The staging: a play-within-a-play
in the world's "Big Theatre" ("El Gran Teatro", by far my favorite
book by
Mujica Láinez -or Manucho, as we all call him here-).
An unavoidable personal progression: my first view of the opera at my early nine
years
on TV (monsters and terror little addict) and the astonishment because of its
intentionally secular language. My determined (and unsuccessful) attempts of
loving it as a teenager when I bought the vinyl records version. The boredom
and annoyance when I saw it years after at the Colon Theatre, stripped from what
I felt it was its really substantive meaning: the Monsters, the "real" Monsters
of Bomarzo...
Love needs necessarily an Other, and that other must have the exact quota of
difference with me, but also of identity (sameness). There is a long lasting
love between Italy and Argentina that has constituted deeply and unconsciously
our identity.
Love stories as channels of knowledge and recognition. But from love to passion
and from passion to madness there is only one step, impossible to measure. I
believe that was what happened to our dear Manucho: he didn't only go mad with Bomarzo at
the point of maybe believing himself the Duke's reencarnation, but his sane
madness, so infectious, drove Ginastera mad, a whole government (including USA's),
the Church, its opponents, its staunch defenders, hundreds of admirers and
detractors... A whole bunch of madmen, even international!
Today Bomarzo is not only a myth so Argentinian as Maradona, Evita or the
dulce
de leche (our sickly sweet own butterscotch), but it has driven mad some
Argentinians once again. And this time Destiny took revenge during some days
making themselves drive the local people of Bomarzo crazy, confused, fascinated,
honored, embarrassed... Again, a whole bunch of madmen, now yes definitely
international!
Bomarzo 2007 is a result of this madness, of this passion, of this historic love between Italy and
Argentina (so many passionate stories were woven before, during and after the
brief and intense filming... but this, even though it's not alien to the film,
should not been even mentioned here), of truly transnational and
identity producing ranges. And a homage.
A homage to so many people, ideas and things that would be futile to enumerate.
And probably unfair by default. But mostly a homage to Art and Culture, to the
madness, the passion and the love that a peaceful and unique town in the centre
of Italy continues provoking, over and over again, to the Argentinian outsiders
who trip over its charms...
Because of this, once again, our most sincere tribute to the people of that marvelous
town, suspended in the magic thread of Symbol and called -no less- "Bomarzo".
Jerry Brignone
