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68

Federico Tiezzi, Sandro Lombardi

Edipus

Auditorium della Stella
from
Friday
4
July
2025
at
21:00
from
Saturday
5
July
2025
at
17:00
to
Sunday
6
July
at
18:00
from
Sunday
6
July
2025
at
18:00
from
2025
at
from
2025
at
from
2025
at
Duration 90 minutes
theater

Edipus

Synopsis

Thirty years after its debut, Federico Tiezzi and Sandro Lombardi bring Edipus back to the stage—Giovanni Testori’s masterpiece that, along with Ambleto and Macbetto, forms the renowned Scarrozzanti trilogy.

At the heart of the play is a traveling actor-manager, abandoned by his troupe: one actor has defected to a cabaret company, while the leading actress has left the stage to marry a furniture dealer from Brianza. Left alone, the Scarrozzante performs Sophocles’ Oedipus night after night, playing every role himself—from Laius to Jocasta, from Oedipus to Dionysus—in a spiraling frenzy.

As the performance unfolds, the line between myth and personal life dissolves. Oedipus’ resentment toward Laius mirrors the Scarrozzante's bitterness toward the actor who deserted him, while his feelings for Jocasta reflect his love-hate relationship with his former stage and life partner.

Testori’s language is revolutionary—an Italian that fuses Lombard dialect, French, Latin, and Spanish, with echoes of Ruzante. This linguistic inventiveness makes Edipus a landmark of "poetic theater." It depicts a world of theater in ruins, yet brimming with an indomitable vitality. As the Scarrozzante proclaims: "That theater… exists and will resist against everyone and everything until the end of all ends!".

A visionary artist straddling theater and the visual arts, playwright, actor, and director Federico Tiezzi once again directs Sandro Lombardi in the role of Edipus—a performance that earned him numerous awards and prompted critic Franco Quadri to marvel: “Who would have imagined that a Tuscan from Casentino would become the ideal interpreter of Giovanni Testori?”.

Credits

Programma

by Giovanni Testori


with Sandro Lombardi

and Antonio Perretta


directed by Federico Tiezzi


set design Pier Paolo Bisleri
costumes Giovanna Buzzi
lighting Gianni Pollini
assistant director Giovanni Scandella


chief electrician/sound engineer Alessandro Di Fraia
chief stage technician Loris Giancola
wardrobe mistress Debora Pino


sets built at the ERT Scenography Workshop

produced by Compagnia Lombardi–Tiezzi
in collaboration with Fondazione Teatri di Pistoia
and Associazione Giovanni Testori

with the support of City of Florence, Tuscany Region, and Italian Ministry of Culture (MiC)

INFORMATION
Please note that dates and times may change.
For updates consult the website www.festivaldispoleto.com

Not all tragic figures are granted the mercy of death after enduring immense suffering and the cruel reversals of fate. Oedipus, the most ill-fated of men, is condemned to wander the world, burdened by the weight of accumulated sorrow; one could even argue that his true tragedy—the need to go on living, despite everything—only begins at the end of the drama. It is therefore highly significant that The Trilogy of the Wandering Players, written by Giovanni Testori between 1972 and 1977, should close on such a note of bleak and inevitable resignation: the actor who has played Oedipus countless times prepares to bow for the last time, his theatre troupe is dissolving, and his personal life is equally in shambles—yet he is denied even the luxury of a tragic, glorious death.

But who is this wretched actor, as ill-starred as a Greek hero? The three plays that compose Testori’s trilogy—Ambleto, Macbetto, Edipus—chronicle the misadventures of a ragtag theatre company (“a most impoverished troupe”), cobbling together productions of Shakespeare and the ancient tragedians with meagre resources. The struggles of myth intertwine—almost to the point of overlap—with the professional and personal hardships of the actors, resonating through the voices of some of the most iconic characters in theatrical literature, in a ceaseless interplay between mimesis and metatheatre.

As in much of his prolific literary oeuvre, Testori casts a loving eye on a world of outcasts, eccentrics, and nonconformists. At the same time, he paints, with vivid specificity, the customs of the attori scarrozzanti—wandering players accustomed to touring Italy with trunks full of dusty costumes and a worn-out repertoire to perform in public squares for a few coins. One can clearly hear, in the Trilogy, echoes of other equally famished and tattered troupes from theatrical history: from Goldoni’s playwrights begging for work in Teatro comico, to Pirandello’s Giganti della montagna, to the threadbare costumes and hollow-eyed face of Eduardo De Filippo’s company leader in L’arte della commedia.

One might wonder how Testori, an art historian and literary scholar, was able to portray this world so intimately—one he had not, at the time, experienced firsthand. The answer, as so often in such cases, lies in a human encounter. Perhaps Trilogia degli Scarrozzanti would never have been born had Giovanni Testori not one day sat in a theatre audience and applauded the great Franco Parenti. “When an actor wins me over,” he would later write, “I no longer hear the words he says—I begin to hear the ones I wish he would say. Before leaving, I went up to him and said: ‘Franco, now I know what I need to write for you.’”

In creating the existential splendor and misery of those imaginary Lombard wanderers, the author thus draws upon tales of the old Italian travelling theatre, heard firsthand from Franco Parenti. Ambleto, directed by a very young Andrée Ruth Shammah, premiered in 1973 in a former cinema on Via Pier Lombardo, which soon became one of Milan’s most important cultural and theatrical venues. Macbetto followed in 1974, and the trilogy concluded with Edipus in 1977. Testori had already conceived his version of the Sophoclean masterpiece—drenched in the damp air of Milan’s suburban fringe (its original title was to be Edipo a Novate)—in 1973, and it was slated to debut in 1975, but it only reached the stage two years later.

In its final form, Edipus is undoubtedly the darkest of the trilogy’s three plays. Between its lines one breathes an air of inexorable failure, as though even the very possibility of dramaturgical structure—or of theatre itself—were being denied. The lead actor is alone, abandoned by his colleague and wife, who has left him for a wealthy industrialist from Brianza. This is not merely the sad end of a personal relationship, but a broader betrayal—a collapse of an entire worldview, the implosion of a whole system of values. The Oedipal-actor's solitude—his only companion a silent technician to whom he occasionally speaks—means that the play cannot fully be performed. Dialogue collapses into monologue, the plurality of roles is absorbed by a single performer, who, with extraordinary virtuosity, must portray all the central characters of the saga in rapid, dizzying costume changes.

And yet, beneath the words of this solitary Lombard Edipus, one senses a desperate longing for life. Where Sophocles’ hero is a victim of fate, buffeted by incomprehensible oracles and unaware guilt, Testori’s Oedipus takes ownership of his crooked destiny. He desires, he wills, he hates: he kills Laius deliberately, and unites with his mother joyfully. Theatrical performance—pared down to its most minimal, dying form—thus regains its essential purpose: a scandalous revelation, a defiant strike against social hypocrisy, a sacred rite in service of truth.

After its premiere in 1977, Edipus returned to the stage only in 1994. Franco Parenti’s role was taken up by Sandro Lombardi, under the direction of Federico Tiezzi. One might ask why this small gem of Italian drama remained locked away for nearly two decades. Among the many possible answers (some tied to the historical-political climate of late 20th-century Italy), one stands out: the linguistic complexity of Testori’s dramaturgy, which may well have intimidated—and still intimidates—potential performers, programmers, and producers. Yet this swirling linguistic pastiche, with its extraordinary blend of Lombard dialect, Latin, European loanwords, poetic heights, and graphic physiological detail, pulses with the rhythm and physicality of theatre itself. It bears the raucous and moving concreteness of the world of guitti—the lowly travelling players—it seeks to portray.

Today, Edipus is heard once more by audiences through the voice of Sandro Lombardi, in a historically resonant revival brought to life by one of Italy’s most passionate and experienced interpreters of Testori’s work. The play arrives in Spoleto like a ship long at sea, its keel etched with the traces of past crossings. In the trials of the actor and his “company,” the audience will detect tales—real and imagined—from generations of theatrical life. Like a set of nesting dolls, the voice of Oedipus overlaps with that of the actor-character, and with the voice of the flesh-and-blood performer on stage. All three cry out together how much toil, how much of one’s life, how much devout commitment theatre demands.

Text by Maddalena Giovannelli

scarica pdf

Dates & Tickets

Tickets: 40€
TICKET OFFICE INFO
Fri
04
Jul
2025
at
21:00
Auditorium della Stella
Corso Mazzini 46
Sat
05
Jul
2025
at
17:00
Auditorium della Stella
Corso Mazzini 46
Sun
06
Jul
2025
at
18:00
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
at
Auditorium della Stella
Timetable
28 Giugno
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
29 Giugno
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
30 Giugno
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
01 Luglio
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:15
14:15
15:30
16:30
17:45
20:30
21:30
02 Luglio
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:15
14:15
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
21:45
04 Luglio
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
05 Luglio
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
06 Luglio
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
07 Luglio
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
08 Luglio
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
15:15
16:30
17:30
18:30
20:45
21:45
09 Luglio
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:15
17:30
18:30
19:45
20:45
21:45

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Biographies

Federico Tiezzi

Director, playwright, visual artist. His studies in art history with Roberto Salvini and Mina Gregori and his connections with artists and musicians proves decisive for his theatrical vocation. During the seventies of the twentieth century, he establishes himself among the leading exponents of the New Italian Theatre as a theatre director, making his mark on the Image Theatre and Post Avant-garde theatrical seasons. In the eighties, he begins to theorize and practice a form of poetry theatre aimed at combining dramaturgy of verse and stage writing. He then makes his opera directional debut in the early nineties with Norma by Vincenzo Bellini. From this moment on, his work on melodrama will develop in parallel with his direction of prose theatre. Throughout his career he has staged works by Aristophanes, Beckett, Bernhard, Brecht, Chekhov, D’Annunzio, Euripides, Forster, Luzi, Manzoni, Müller, Pasolini, Proust, Sophocles, Schnitzler, Shakespeare, Testori, and within the field of opera he has worked on Bizet, Corghi, Giordano, Mascagni, Massenet, Mozart, Pennisi, Puccini, Purcell, Rossini, Vacchi, Verdi, Wagner, Zandonai... In 2021, to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, he staged Mario Luzi’s Purgatory at the Grand Theatre in Pompeii. In 2023, he staged Euripides’ Medea at the Greek Theatre of Syracuse with a record attendance of over 100,000 spectators. In 2024 it is Racine’s Phaedra in the translation by Giovanni Raboni. Numerous, the awards received for his work both in theatre and opera.

Sandro Lombardi

Actor, playwright and writer. Under the direction of Federico Tiezzi, he has interpreted, among others, works by Aristophanes, Beckett, Bernhard, Brecht, D'Annunzio, Luzi, Pasolini, Pirandello and Schnitzler. His performances as Giovanni Testori, which have revolutionized the image of the Lombard writer, are of great importance. Between 1988 and 2002, he received four Ubu Awards for best male performance. He has made CD recordings of Poems by Pasolini and Dante's Inferno (Garzanti); The theatre of Giovanni Testori in the shows by Sandro Lombardi and Federico Tiezzi (Edizioni ERI); and Cleopatràs by Giovanni Testori. His most recent interpretations, unanimously appreciated, are Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard, 2020, Scenes from Faust by Johann W. Goethe and Purgatory by Mario Luzi, 2022. His first work as a director was that of Anna Della Rosa in Erodiàs + Mater strangosciàs, 2023. Between theatre, music and radio, he has worked, among others, with Furio Bordon, Arturo Cirillo, Giancarlo Cobelli, Rainer W. Fassbinder, Roberto Latini, Claudio Longhi, Mario Martone, Riccardo Muti, Giorgio Pressburgher, Carlo Quartucci, Pascal Rambert, Paolo Rosa, Giorgio Sangati, Fabrizio Sinisi, and Fabio Vacchi. He published Gi anni felici (The Happy Years), a coming-of-age novel, for Garzanti, Bagutta Prize, First Work 2004. His first novel, Le mani sull’amore (Hands on Love), was published in 2009, Feltrinelli. From 2015 Queste assolate tenebre (These Sunny Shadows), Lindau, on his work with Mario Luzi.

Antonio Perretta

An actor, he graduated from the Piccolo Teatro School in Milan under the direction of Carmelo Rifici. His early collaborations saw him working with Ennio Coltorti, Claudio Autelli, Mario Baldini, and Paolo Bignamini. Between 2021 and 2022, he performed in Doppio Sogno, adapted from Schnitzler and directed by Rifici, as well as in M – Il Figlio del Secolo, based on Antonio Scurati’s novel and directed by Massimo Popolizio. In 2022, he also staged his first solo performance, Antonio – Vita di un Guitto. In May 2023, he took part in the site-specific production Il Fabbricone by Giovanni Testori, directed by Andrea Chiodi. That same year, he was selected for the prestigious two-year advanced training program Teatro Laboratorio della Toscana, directed by Federico Tiezzi, where he worked with renowned artists such as Sandro Lombardi, Roberto Latini, Francesca Della Monica, Monica Bacelli, Fabrizio Sinisi, and Cristiana Morganti.

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