Melologue written, directed and performed by
Pino Petruzzelli
Music by Philip Glass
Piano
Valentina Messa
Video
Lorenzo Zeppa
In collaboration with Museo Diocesano di Genova and Teatro Ipotesi
Cardinal Luca Fieschi (Genoa, 1270 – Avignon 1336) was a prominent figure in Genoa in the early 1300s. After his death in Avignon, his remains were brought back to Genoa for burial in the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, where an imposing funerary monument had been commissioned for him. In the centuries that followed, various events led to the damage and relocation of various parts of the monument inside the cathedral. Many fragments were found during the restorations of San Lorenzo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and then brought to the Museum of St. Augustine, where in about 1937 Orlando Grosso took charge of studying its original composition. The recent rearrangement was carried out by the Diocesan Museum, directed by Paola Martini, based on a museographic project by Giovanni Tortelli (Studio Tortelli e Frassoni, Brescia) and with scientific advice from Clario Di Fabio and Francesca Girelli (University of Genoa). Today you can admire the Fieschi Monument at the Diocesan Museum in Genoa. Pino Petruzzelli’s show recounts all that we fail to see before the rearrangement of a monument whose only evidence dates back to the 1600s: “We are in front of one of the most magnificent and superb burials that were in Italy.” Between words and music, the history of the monument is retraced with the aim of reviving the dream of those who worked with dedication to bring its beauty to light.
Comments Pino Petruzzelli, “This latest work of mine is a journey between history and art. Sometimes we ask ourselves “why art and why history?” For me, art is a secret science always ready to make us understand who we are and who the people around us are. History, on the other hand, is a poem that tells about tomorrow and shows us all the times we thought we saw, but actually did not see.”